


Triangles and Squares

by iamhighondumbbitchjuice



Category: Voltron - Fandom, Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Altean Lance (Voltron), Altean Prince Lance (Voltron), Better Than Canon, Bisexual Lance (Voltron), Bodyguard Keith (Voltron), Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Galra Keith (Voltron), Hunk & Lance (Voltron) Friendship, Keith (Voltron) is Bad at Feelings, Keith (Voltron) was Raised by the Blade of Marmora, M/M, Oblivious Lance (Voltron), Orphan Keith (Voltron), Orphan Lance (Voltron), Orphanage, Prince Lance (Voltron), Socially Awkward Keith (Voltron), hoot hoot here we go, i am trying, klance, klance fanfiction, my mother is basically my beta, plotdriven klance, well fuck me ig, yeet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-30
Updated: 2020-05-27
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:55:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 20
Words: 53,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21612640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iamhighondumbbitchjuice/pseuds/iamhighondumbbitchjuice
Summary: Lance and Keith grow up together in the orphanage, that they were forced to reside at when both of their parents died. They become friends quickly after they meet, trusting each other fully and finding joy in one another's presence during their time in the melancholic building, that is the orphanage.But sadly all childhoods sooner or later must come to an end.Keith is adopted by The Blade of Marmora after barely turning nine, rapidly after that Lance gets adopted by the king and queen themselves. So while Keith gets trained to be as strong as possible, Lance gets trained to be the perfect social figure.They spend years away from each other only to meet again when the Royal family, including Lance, fall prey to the mysterious Lotor. Lance needs a bodyguard and by sheer coincidence Keith is that person.They just don't recognize each other for a while.
Relationships: Hunk/Shay (Voltron), Keith/Lance (Voltron)
Comments: 130
Kudos: 578
Collections: Klance





	1. pancakes and tears

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I've gone weak and  
> I'm sick of speakin'  
> So hear me out, you're the cure  
> Or something more"  
> -Dylan McKenna (Why Do You Feel So Down)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Important Edit: i know the spacing in the first few chapters is almost impossible to read, but please bare with me, it'll get better as you go along, I promise!
> 
> Hey um, it would actually surprise me if anyone's actually reading this, but hi you're so insanely appreciated if you're reading this:))) Anyways this first chapter is basically a whole package of separate events that happened in Lance's and Keith's childhood together. I truly hope that the people (if there even are any) reading this enjoy this chapter, also this is my first story on archive so I might struggle a bit with tags, formatting, you know that type of stuff, sorry in advance i guess haha (I used to write on wattpad, I know it was pretty tragic.)  
> Well anyhows I hope you kinda enjoy this mess of a story that I am truly trying my hardest to write:))  
> also here are a few songs that I kinda liked listening to while writing this, go check them out if you find the time;):  
> Boredom - Tyler the Creator, Rex Orange County and Anna of the North  
> Why Do You Feel So Down - Dylan Mckenna  
> Best Friend - Rex Orange County

The orphanage was dark at night. 

But luckily Lance wasn’t afraid of the dark. 

He carefully went down the stairs, skipping the steps that he knew would creak.  
The orphanage might be dark at night, but it was also eerily beautiful: long dark shadows dancing on the walls, portraits that seemed to almost look at you when you walked by and if you looked through the windows closely enough, you could see the stars. 

Lance aimlessly wandered the halls that night, keeping his steps light, so that he wouldn’t be heard.  
Then when he slipped into one of the more narrow corridors of the big building, he heard a sound.  
His first instinct was to turn around, because if it was one of the caretakers he would get in trouble, when he listened more closely, though, he could hear that the sound was a slight sniffle that kept returning. 

Someone was crying. 

It wasn’t that it was incredibly unusual to hear people cry in the orphanage, but it was unusual to hear someone cry in one of the narrow corridors in the middle of the night.  
Lance’s curiosity got the better of him and he slowly made his way forward, towards the sound.  
A black-haired boy was sitting against a wall in the most far away corner of the corridor with his face buried in his knees. A shudder moving through his body every time he sniffled.  
Lance couldn’t just keep standing there, he had to say something.  
“Hi,” he eventually settled for.  
The boy’s head shot up. Dark eyes filled with tears. “What are you doing here?”  
“Ehm I heard you and I don’t know, I guess I wanted to ask you what’s wrong?”  
The boy turned his gaze downward again. “Oh, well I’m fine. Nothing’s wrong.”  
There was clearly something wrong, but Lance decided not to push it further. Maybe he could try and distract the boy a bit though. “Okay, well um, what’s your name then? Mine’s Lance.”  
“I’m…” The boy took a pause to sniff. “Keith.”  
“That’s a cool name!” Keith looked up at him with his head slightly tilted to the side. Lance continued asking questions, “How old are you?”  
“Seven.”  
“No way! Me too!” Lance continued again, “Okay, okay next question: What’s your favorite animal?‘  
“A lion.” A slight pause. “Yours?”  
Lance’s eyes lit up. “Wow! We are like the same person! A lion is my favorite animal too!”  
Before Lance could even say anything else, Keith suddenly asked a question. “What’s your favorite food?”  
“Ehmm pancakes or pizza. They’re both amazing.”  
Keith’s eyes lit up too, just for a little bit, “Mine too!”  
Soon Keith wasn’t crying anymore, but they were simply firing questions at each other, trying to find out if they in fact were the same person, with Lance asking most of the questions.  
When they finally went to their seperate dorms, the orphanage had already gotten a bit lighter and the shadows were no longer dancing on the walls. 

\---

Lance noticed Keith the next day. 

They were in the dining hall and they had just gotten their food. Keith was sitting alone at a table. Lance waited a few minutes to see if anybody went to sit next to Keith, but when nobody did, he gathered some food on his plate and stood up from his seat.  
Balancing his food on his plate, careful not to drop it, he walked over to the other side of the dining hall and casually took a seat next to Keith.  
“Hi,” Lance said again.  
Keith curiously looked up from his plate, seemingly surprised to see Lance there.  
“Hi,” Keith said.  
“Why were you sitting alone?”  
“I’m half Galra.”  
Lance didn’t answer that. He just waited for further explanation. Sure, the Galra were disliked, but it wasn’t _that_ bad, right?  
“So?”  
“People don’t like me,” Keith simply said as if it was the most normal thing in the world.  
“That’s weird, I mean sure some Galra are bad, but most are good, right?”  
“Yeah.” Galra were and always had been considered to be evil by almost everyone. That probably was because to a lot of people they looked like monsters: with their purple skin, dark purple eyes, pointy ears, and long stretched pupils. Keith didn’t look _that_ Galra, the only sign that he could be part of the species were his purple eyes, but for the rest there wasn’t much to notice. As far as Lance was aware, there were a few bad Galra out there, but most were good, just like with most other races. His parents, for the short time that they’d been in his life, had always taught him to be kind to everyone, no matter their race, skin colour, species or gender.  
Lance shook his head. “Well anyway you are not sitting alone anymore.”  
The corners of Keith’s lips turned up slightly.

\---

“Keith!” Lance’s eyes frantically scanned over the trees and grass in the forest behind the orphanage, where he and Keith had been playing, in search for the dark-haired boy. They had met a little over a month ago and already were closer than Lance was with any of his other friends. “Keith come look at this!”  
A second ago, when Lance had looked for Keith he hadn’t been there, but now as if it was magic the boy had somehow ended up behind Lance without him noticing.  
“What?” Keith asked curiously. 

Lance turned towards Keith and held up his closed hand. Slowly he opened his hand just  
enough to reveal a tiny frog sitting in the palm, making no attempt to jump away.  
Keith’s eyes lit up in something akin to awe.  
“Do you wanna hold him? He’s funny to hold, kinda slippery.”  
Keith simply extended two open hands to Lance, and Lance in return opened his hand a bit further and let the frog casually hop from Lance’s hand to Keith’s.  
Nobody really said anything for a while, Lance just smiled gleefully and Keith happily looked down at the tiny frog.  
“You’re right,” Keith eventually said. “he _is_ slippery.”

\---

Some days people would come to the orphanage looking to adopt.  
Today was one of those days and Keith was clearly scared. 

All the kids always had to line up in front of the entrance and introduce themselves to the soon to be parents.  
Lance knew that Keith found this process in particular very very scary.  
Keith was standing next to Lance, feverishly awaiting the arrival of the new couple.  
When the doors to the orphanage swung open, Keith almost entirely slid behind Lance, as if hiding himself. 

The new couple didn’t look scary at all though: there was a dark skinned woman with warm brown eyes, joined by a fair skinned man with light blond hair. Nothing abnormal about them, and absolutely not intimidating at all, yet Keith was still hidden behind Lance’s back.  
“They look nice,” Lance whispered so soft that only Keith could hear it. “It will probably be fine. Besides if you don’t come out, the caretakers will see that you didn’t introduce yourself and you will get in trouble.”  
Lance looked at his back and could see a fraction of Keith’s face sticking out from behind him. Lance smiled gently at the purple-eyed boy as he started to get into view more and more.  
The round of introductions from all the children had already begun by the time Keith was fully in sight again and soon it would be their turn. Lance had purposely positioned them in such a way that he would go and introduce himself before Keith, so that Keith would take his introduction for an example. He had done that every time since the first time Keith had told him that he was scared of meeting new people and introducing himself.  
The girl next to Lance was suddenly done talking and the room fell silent for a while, waiting for him to speak. They didn’t need to wait long.  
“I’m Lance McClain and I’m seven years old,” he said in a chirpy voice.  
Now it was Keith’s turn. Lance nodded encouragingly at him.  
“I’m Keith Kogane and I’m also seven years old,” Keith said determinedly. 

Really it wasn’t hard for Lance, saying your name and age wasn’t something all that special for him, but for _Keith_ it was immensely impressive. Keith didn’t like talking all that much, not even to Lance and they had been friends for almost half a year now. So for him to introduce himself to a stranger, well that was a big accomplishment.  
Lance was proud of him.

\---

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Keith suddenly asked out of the blue on a certain day while they were sitting in the forest.  
“Tell you what?” Lance had an inkling of what Keith was talking about, but he hoped that he was wrong.  
“That it’s your birthday today.” Sadly it wasn’t often that Lance was wrong and this was no exception apparently.  
Lance just shrugged. “I don’t celebrate my birthday, I don’t like it.” Birthdays even at such a young age reminded Lance of the family he used to have, of the fun he had had with his mother, father and sister before...Lance didn’t want to think about that.  
Keith arched a brow. “Well you got me something for my birthday so I’m gonna get you something for yours.” Lance had made a bracelet tied together from flowers for Keith’s birthday. It wasn’t much, but it was enough in the orphanage.  
“What?” Lance curiously asked.  
“I don’t know yet, but it’s gonna be good.” Keith smiled contently and Lance couldn’t help but smile with him.

\---

There were a lot of kids who liked to pick on Keith.

Today Peter and his friends decided to try and tease him. They had always treated Keith like a laughing stock for being half Galra, while there was really nothing funny about that. Yes Keith was half Galra, but that didn’t change the fact that Keith was just Keith no matter if he was half Galra or not.  
Peter had always been mean to Keith, and to make matters worse, he was also two years older than Keith and Lance.  
“Hey there purple boy? Are you still planning on stealing?” Peter and his friends had dubbed Keith ‘purple boy’, which didn’t make any sense since Keith never had a purple skin.  
Lance knew that Keith was just going to let the remark slide, because he didn’t like talking, but luckily Keith had a friend like Lance who wasn’t at all afraid of talking. “He isn’t planning on stealing and never was in the first place. Also your have more of a purple skin than him, so maybe you should be called ‘purple boy’” Lance went the extra mile and even made air quotes with his fingers when saying ‘purple boy’.  
“Pfff yeah sure whatever,” Peter said as he walked off with his friends.  
Keith turned his face toward Lance. “Peter’s voice is really high.”  
Lance just huffed in agreement. Peter’s voice was high, almost unbearably so.  
Peter sucked.

\---

"Lance!" A vague voice pierced through Lance's dreams. "Lance wake up!" Apparently someone wanted him to wake up, but his dreams were so nice for a change. Lance decided that he wasn't going to wake up. Whatever it was that the person wanted could be done tomorrow.

That decision swiftly changed when something started shaking him. Roughly.  
Lance opened his eyes with a start and saw two pale hands latched onto his shoulders, a face with wide purple eyes, and black hair.  
Keith.  
"What?" Lance asked in a sleepy voice, ready to go back to sleep.  
"I found the way to the dungeons." 

Now _that_ drew Lance's attention. 

The dungeons were strictly forbidden and no one knew where the path to the secret place even was except for the caretakers, and now Keith apparently.  
Lance was wide awake now.  
"No way!" Lance yelled a little too loud. They both cringed at the sound. "Really?" Lance asked in a softer tone than before.  
Keith nodded furiously. "I went on a walk and ended up almost falling down the stairs. They had to be the stairs to the dungeons."  
Lance was up on his feet in a split second and grinned mischievously at his best friend.  
"What are we waiting for then?"

They silently moved through the corridors and just like in the night that Lance had met Keith, the shadows were dancing on the walls.  
Keith turned out to know exactly where he had to go, because he swiftly and without hesitation slipped into halls and corridors where Lance would easily have gotten lost.  
After what felt like ages Keith came to a stop in a narrow corridor that simply, like so many other corridors in the building, had a dead end. As far as Lance could see there was no staircase in sight.  
"Where is it?" Lance asked confused, turning his face towards Keith.  
Keith just smiled knowingly in return, began to walk up to the wall at the end of the corridor and came to a stop again.  
When he saw that Lance hadn't moved from his spot yet, he waved frantically at him to get him to come.  
Lance warily walked up to him and went to stand right by Keith's side.  
Keith smiled contentedly and began shuffling one of his feet around on the floor, as if he was looking for something.  
"Gotcha!" Keith suddenly excitedly yelled out. He lifted his foot up and stomped on the floor. Hard.  
"What are you-" Lance stopped mid-sentence, because something was happening to the floor. The floor next to the place that Keith had stomped started folding in on itself, opening up to reveal...a staircase. A whole staircase. Just like the other staircases in the building, wide and spiraling down. "Whoa..," was all that Lance could say.  
"Wanna go down?"  
Lance grinned. "The last who gets there is a rotten egg!"  
He broke into a sprint before Keith could even get the chance to process what he had said.  
Lance heard a faint, "Hey!" from somewhere behind him, but the only effect that had was that he just started to run down the stairs faster. 

The steps suddenly stopped and Lance almost tripped over his own feet. He smiled happily knowing that he had won the little game from Keith.  
That triumph however, was gone rapidly, when Lance saw the place he ended up in: one long stretched dark hall with glowing torches on either side. It seemed to have no end, the hall also had no doors, and to make matters even scarier it was completely deserted not a single soul to be seen.  
"That wasn't fair I-Whoa…," Keith's protests fell silent as he also took in the ominous sight before them.  
They glanced at each other, then at the same time looked back at the hallway.  
"Wanna have a look? Or go back?" Lance asked after a long time of them just standing there.  
"I-I don't know. You?"  
Go back. Definitely go back.  
"Let's look, we came this far. Right?"  
Why did Lance say that? Why?  
"Yeah..," Keith answered.  
They both didn't make a move for a while.  
Lance took a step forward and Keith quickly did the same.  
He took another step and Keith followed him again.

Soon they were walking, slow that for certain, but still, they were on the move. They passed torch after torch with no indication of where the hallway was going to end in sight.  
Lance threw a glance behind him and no longer saw the staircase. It had disappeared from view completely, only to be replaced by darkness.  
Now they were just walking on a path with seemingly no end or beginning.  
They had been going for what felt like ages when Lance finally saw something, the outline of what could be a door, at the end of the hallway.  
“Look,” Lance whispered to Keith who just nodded at him and started speeding up his pace, clearly desperate to get out of this hallway. 

Now that they were getting closer Lance could make out a shiny doorknob and what before had just been an outline was an unmistakable door frame now.  
The door was tall, taller than either Keith or Lance and probably even a meter or so taller than most caretakers in the orphanage.  
Their pace had sped up so fast that they had reached the door in no time. Keith slowly extended his hand and put it on the metal doorknob. It had to be a bit rusty because it took Keith several hard tries to successfully turn it.  
Together they pushed against the heavy door and it stiffly swung open.

Behind the door there was a small room.  
It had a desk, one big bookcase filled with stacks of papers, and a door opposite where Keith and Lance were standing. That door was more narrow than the one they had just entered from, but just as tall.  
“What is this place?” Lance asked.  
Keith shrugged. “I don’t know.”  
Lance walked over to the desk in the middle of the room to take a closer look, while Keith went to the bookcase standing next to it.  
They were silent for a while and the only thing that filled the room with some sort of sound were the papers Keith was rustling around.  
“Lance come look at this!” Lance looked up from the desk and walked over to Keith, who was standing with his back turned to him bowed over a stack of papers from one of the shelves in the bookcase.  
“Yeah?” Lance asked.  
Keith just handed him some papers from the stack without further explanation. Lance looked down at them and just as he wanted to ask what they were, without really paying attention to the actual words on the page he saw his name printed in bold. Next to a name was a picture of his face and underneath the name was a date.  
The date, Lance realized with a start, being the date that he had come to the orphanage. Other things on the page were his birthdate, the names of his passed family members, the illnesses that he had had in his life, and his old address.  
“The pages are about us,” Lance stated. With ‘us’ meaning them and the other children in the orphanage.

Keith didn’t have time to answer, because they heard a sound that closely resembled a footstep on the other side of the narrower door.  
Keith and Lance shot each other one look and both went rigid, waiting for the confirmation that it was in fact a footstep. 

They heard another footstep.

And that was enough to send them into action.  
Keith quickly put the stack of papers back onto the bookshelf he took it from and Lance was already holding the door they had entered from, ready to sprint out with Keith once he was ready.  
Keith ran up to Lance just when the lock of the narrow door opposite them started rumbling. Lance slammed the door closed and they broke into a run. The walk that had felt like ages turned out to be a two minute run. They ran up the stairs, adrenaline coursing through their veins, making them run faster.  
Once they were back in the corridor, Keith stomped on the floor again, in that same place, and the floor started to fold out again covering the gap that had revealed the staircase. 

“Well come on then,” Keith said when they were catching their breath. “We still have a long way to go back to the dorms.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So was it okay? Bad? Good? Awful? Let me know! I'm curious!:)  
> I really hope that you enjoyed. I honestly love you if you came this far without clicking the story off, thank you<333  
> ALSO I AM EXCITED!!!!!!!!!!!!  
> Have a fantastic rest of your day;)  
> ehm yeah byeee,  
> -Amber


	2. presents and blades

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I am being adopted,” Keith cut him off, finally looking up into Lance’s eyes.  
> “Oh..,” Lance said, slowly realizing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi:)) thank you for reading the first chapter and welcome back!;)  
> Here's some music I listened to:  
> -Voila by Françoise Hardy  
> -Je te laisserai des mots by Patrick Watson  
> -La Lune by Billie Marten  
> -At Seventeen by Janis Ian
> 
> (Idk why, but I was in a kinda French mood)

Keith was enjoying the sun.  
He was sitting in the forest with Lance, on their usual spot. Keith had just turned nine and Lance had given him a bird folded out of paper. He made it himself. It was pretty impressive. 

“Hey Keith?” Lance, who was usually energetic and always jumping from one topic to another, was now completely and utterly calm. It didn’t happen often, but when it did Keith couldn’t help but smile.  
“Yes?”  
“For how long have we been friends?”  
Keith was quiet for a while, trying to calculate inside his head.  
“Like a little over two years, I think?”  
Lance blew out a long breath of air, as if he was impressed. “That’s so long! It feels like we just met yesterday!” Rarely calm Lance was long gone now.  
“Yeah?”  
“Yeah absolutely! We’ll be friends for a super long time won’t we?”  
Keith let out a slight chuckle and grinned broadly. “Definitely!” 

They went silent again. 

After a while Keith glanced in Lance’s direction and saw that the boy was, yet again, calm.  
_Hmm_ , Keith thought. _a calm Lance, twice in one day? That’s a blessing._  
Keith directed his eyes up at the sun again, feeling the warmth of the star seep deep into his skin.  
Everything was good.  
Life was good.

Keith heard a rustling sound in the bushes behind him and turned around in one sharp movement, only to see one of the caretakers, Nadia, move towards them.  
“Oh finally,” Nadia sighed, clearly out of breath. “There you are. Keith you have to come with me, there is someone here for you.”  
Keith shot a confused look at Lance, who looked just as confused.  
“Okay, yeah um, I’ll come with you.” Keith rose from his spot on the grass and realized that Lance was doing the same.  
“I’ll walk with you,” Lance said. Keith simply nodded. 

Nadia waved at them trying to get them to follow her. They walked through the forest, among the many, very old trees. 

Quickly they found themselves at the edge of the forest, looking straight at the old grey orphanage. They walked through the main hall, various kids passing them by, and finally ended up right in front of the big door that marked the entrance to the orphanage’s head’s office. Nadia softly knocked on the door, and opened it when a loud ‘Come in!’ was heard from the other side. Nadia nodded at Keith to go inside, but made no move to go in herself.  
“I can’t come with him, can I?” Lance asked, nodding in Keith’s direction.  
Nadia shook her head with a sad smile on her face, “No Lance, I’m sorry but neither of us can come with him this time. He has to do this on his own.”  
Lance nodded and smiled encouragingly at Keith.  
Keith was scared, but not as scared as he would’ve been before he met Lance. Without overthinking it much further, Keith stepped inside.  
Keith slowly closed the door behind him, shooting one last glance at Lance. 

When Keith turned around to look at the headmistress, he soon saw that she wasn’t alone in the large room.  
A man with blue almost grey skin, yellow eyes, orange spots on his face, pointy ears, and one long silver braid was sitting in front of the headmistress’ desk, calmly looking at Keith.  
He was unmistakably Galra. 

What was going on? 

“Welcome Keith, do take a seat please,” the headmistress said as she pointed at one of the chairs. Keith sat on the seat waiting for the headmistress to continue.  
“This man is Kolivan, he’s the head of a Galra group called: **The Blade of Marmora.** They are fighters for what’s right, trying to help the defenseless and such.” She fell quiet for a while and Keith stayed silent waiting for her to get to the point. “They are looking to adopt you.”

Oh. 

“We are looking for new members to train, there are more kids just like you getting their first trainings, so you wouldn’t be alone.” 

_Oh_.

“How do you know that I’m Galra? You’re looking for Galra people, right? So you had to know that I was Galra.”  
Kolivan shot a glance at the headmistress.  
“We have known that you existed _and_ that you were half Galra since the very first time that you came to this orphanage. Your headmistress called us up with the news that she had a Galra kid under her wing, but that she wanted to wait letting us adopt you until you had become a bit older,” Kolivan said, before the headmistress could speak. 

Keith felt a jab of betrayal inside of his chest. Even in this place, a place that was supposed to be safe for all children, the very first thing that people cared about was the fact that he was half Galra. Without even truly knowing who Keith was as a person, his headmistress had already called an outside organisation to tell them that he was somewhat Galra. 

“What if I don’t wanna go?” Keith asked.

The headmistress smiled at him softly. “Almost all kids here get adopted sooner or later, you are no exception Keith. These men truly are brave, and they have a home for you, think about it, a place where you truly belong.” 

Keith furrowed his brows. Didn’t he belong in the orphanage? Wasn’t this his home? He felt at home here, where the shadows danced on the walls, where the ground could fold in on itself to reveal a staircase, where he had an endless forest to play in, where he had his best friend.  
His best friend.  
_Lance_.  
He couldn’t just abandon Lance could he? 

“Isn’t this my home?” he eventually asked.  
Again the headmistress smiled at him. “This is only a temporary home Keith. I know you think of Lance right now, I have seen you two together for years, but let me say that most kids get adopted from this orphanage. A social kid like Lance will, surely, also go someday. He will get adopted just like you are right now. He won’t be here forever.” 

Keith cast his eyes downward, towards the floor. “Are you sure?” he asked, his voice a mere whisper.  
“I’m positive,” the headmistress said. “Now please go pack your bags Keith, you have a long trip ahead.”  
Keith nodded and slowly left the room, his gaze still on the floor. 

“What happened?” Lance asked curiously as Keith shut the door to the headmistress’ office.  
“I need to leave,” Keith answered still looking at the ground.

“What? Why? I mean where? W-‘  
“I am being adopted,” Keith cut him off, finally looking up into Lance’s eyes.  
“Oh..,” Lance said, slowly realizing. 

Lance looked sad.  
Keith knew that _he_ felt sad, so maybe Lance felt the same way. 

“By who?” Lance eventually, after a long minute of silence, asked.  
“A Galra group; The Blade of Marmora. They’re good Galra so I’ll be fine I gue-” 

Before Keith could finish his sentence, two arms wrapped around him, holding him tight.  
“Just be careful alright?” Lance asked, his voice muffled by Keith’s shoulder. “And promise me that we’ll meet again.”

Keith wrapped his own pale arms around Lance, returning the embrace. “I’ll be careful and I promise that we’ll see each other again."

"I'll miss you," Lance said after nodding into Keith's shoulder.

"I'll miss you too."

\---

Keith was packing when he saw something, it was hidden behind his books, and the only reason that he was now seeing it was because he was removing things from his room. 

It was a stone. 

More specifically the stone that he had been wanting to give Lance for his eighth birthday a little over a year ago. It had Keith’s and Lance’s names carved into it and a little message below it saying ‘Happy birthday Lance!’ in neat handwriting.

“I thought I had given it already,” Keith whispered to himself. He had forgotten about the stone’s existence entirely. He had promised to give the present to Lance and he had said that it was going to be good, but he just forgot about it, and Lance had never asked for it.

He picked up the stone and determinedly walked out of his dorm to Lance’s. He knew the way to Lance’s room blindly, he had gone there at least a thousand times: go right, pass the large window, go left, pass the weird looking portrait, and finally there it is the third door on your right. 

Keith knocked on Lance’s door, and when he didn’t get a reply he simply opened it, knowing that Lance never locked it. Keith slipped inside, and put the stone on Lance’s desk, ready to be found.

 _This is it_ , Keith realized as he looked at Lance’s room one last time. 

\---

One thing was for certain; flying was scary.

Keith had been afraid the moment that the Blade of Marmora's ship had left the ground, and the fear never stopped as they slowly left Altea's atmosphere and flew higher, going above the clouds. 

Keith soon was sure of another thing; space was dark, _very_ dark. 

Apart from the tiny spots of light that, Keith could only assume, were stars, space was an empty, dark void. He could barely feel the ship moving as he looked outside of the ship's enormous window, it was overwhelming, all of it. 

"Strange isn't it?" Kolivan asked. "Flying always keeps being strange to me, no matter how often I do it."

Keith just nodded, still too shocked to say anything. 

Keith was also scared of something else, a thought in his head that just kept growing: the simple fact that he looked even less Galra than human. People already hated him for looking slightly Galra on Altea, what would Galra people do if they had to work with someone, who looked more like the humans who had possibly bullied them for years? 

It was a scary thought to think of.

He didn’t like it.

\---

The training room was large, filled with still unknown objects. Keith was surrounded by other children, all his age, who were here for the same reason he was; to in due time become blades: solidified members of the Blade of Marmora. The other children sometimes turned to look at him, shooting him glances that variated from curious to plain mean.

What an amazing start. 

Keith had been in the headquarters of the Blade of Marmora for a week now, learning as much as he could about his surroundings. It felt a bit empty without Lance, but Keith barely had time to think about that as he was discovering all about the strange purple glowing halls, and the people walking in them.

Keith's thoughts, however, were interrupted when a man walked into the purple training hall.

“Welcome to your first real training cadets, I am, as some of you already know, Zenith, and there's a few things you need to know about your training and education before we start." the man, who's name apparently was Zenith, took a small pause before continuing, "There are four categories that you need to excel in, if you want to unlock your blade." He pointed at the small silver knives that every child, including Keith, had one of. "That knife will grow out to a blade once you unlock it, and my mission as a trainer is, to help you grow and get the knife to reach its full potential." 

The children around Keith including Keith himself, all took a nervous look at their knives, as if it would just grow into a blade if they watched it for long amount of time.

Keith’s gaze shot up when he heard Zenith talk again, "The four categories are: sword fighting, hand to hand combat, sharpshooting, and tactical thinking." Keith felt his eyes widen, there was no way he could do all that, right? 

"For the first three categories, you will get practical training, in the form of fighting, however, for the last category, tactical thinking, you will get theoretical lessons, without having to fight. You will all, when you are sixteen, get into the simulation..." He paused to point at a big grey cabin in the middle of the training hall. "to practice what you've learned and to get a final test, testing your skills and determining what missions you will eventually end up going on."

Zenith was done talking and whispers slowly started arising in the hall. A boy next to Keith murmured a soft, 'Shit', to no one in particular, before looking down at his knife. 

The whispers were quickly shut down when Zenith suddenly whistled loudly, catching everyone's attention in a heartbeat.  
"Right, so everyone, get ready, pair up and grab one of the training swords from the side of the room, we're starting with sword fighting today."  
Everyone except for the girl on Keith’s left side seemed to have found a partner the second Zenith said the words, because Keith now saw there was no one else left.  
“It seems like we’ll have to pair up together, there’s no one else left. I’m Meira by the way.”

“Yeah okay, I’m Keith.”

Meira nodded, and started walking towards the training swords, grabbing one of the shorter and bulkier ones. Keith tucked his knife away in his belt, went up to the place Meira was standing, and picked out a lean, long blade. 

As Meira and Keith were standing on a suitable training spot, Zenith began talking again, explaining the basics of sword fighting: a few positions, the way to hold your sword, and a few attacking techniques. “That’s all of the basics, begin sparring with your partner, I’ll walk by and instruct you if necessary.”

Meira and Keith looked at each other once, not needing any words to know that they were both ready. They went to stand in the position that Zenith had just taught them, his instructions burning clear and bright in Keith’s head. Meira counted down and suddenly they were in their own little match. 

Meira kept trying to strike Keith, but Keith never tried to strike back, at least not at first, at first he only protected himself. After dodging all of Meira’s attacks with ease, Keith suddenly knew what to do, he didn’t know how he knew this, but every fibre of his soul knew what he had to do. He acted as if he was trying to strike Meira’s shoulder, when Meira got distracted because of this, trying to protect herself from Keith jabbing her shoulder, Keith whirled his blade around, barely missing the protective sweep of her blade, and landing right above her heart with his sword. 

Keith had won.

Both out of breath, Meira and Keith looked at each other, both not saying anything until Meira murmured, “You’re good.” and then asked a little louder, “Have you done this before?”  
Keith shook his head and Meira’s eyes widened slightly.

Keith’s blade was still hovering above Meira’s chest when Zenith walked by.  
“I saw that manoeuvre of yours, it was good, you can lower your sword now though,” Zenith said sounding amused. 

Keith smiled sheepishly at Meira and lowered his sword.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's a fun fact: This chapter was supposed to include a lot of extra scenes, but now I'm adding those to the next 'Keith' chapter, because the time gap was too big in between the two periods:))
> 
> Anyways did you guys like it?:) Let me know! I always appreciate feedback!:)  
> Have a great rest of your day!  
> -Amber


	3. parades and carriages

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "With the cold air of the dawn  
> I secretly open my eyes  
> This city's harmony, it’s so familiar to me  
> The days of my youth seem so far away  
> And now it's full of buildings and cars  
> But this is my home now (Seoul, Seoul)"  
> ~seoul-RM

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, I know it's been a little while, but I'm back again. Sorry for not uploading haha.  
> I hope you enjoy:)  
> moosic:  
> seoul-RM  
> Singularity-BTS  
> New Moon on Monday- Duran Duran  
> 

“Lance! Come on!” Vaton, a good friend of Lance’s, yelled at him from the door. “We have to go!”  
Lance sprinted to the door, grabbing the stone Keith gave to him a year ago on the way, putting it where he always put it, in his pocket.  
He was eager to go to the city and see the Royal Parade. Lance was finally going to see the princess, king and queen with his own eyes. 

Vaton, Lammar, Tragis and a few other of Lance’s friends were waiting by the door, quickly starting to run towards the square that was in front of the orphanage, when Lance reached them.  
They ran together, arriving just in time for the caretakers to start checking off the names. 

Lance triumphantly grinned at his friends, and they grinned right back. 

When the caretakers finally checked off all of their names, they went into the orphanage’s relatively small hovercraft. The hovercraft had always looked like a wreck, with its dents everywhere and even a hole that had been covered up with some kind of cloth. It was pretty depressing.

Once everyone was inside, they started towards Eridanus, the only city remotely close to the orphanage and also the city where the Royal Parade would take place. Lance was seated in the hovercraft with Vaton on one side and Tragis on the other. During the whole ride they just talked about how amazing the parade would be, and how beautiful the royal family would look. It was fun. 

“We’re here! We have a long way to go to the main street, and there’s a lot of traffic so please stay with the group. Don’t wander off!” the headmistress, who was also with them, yelled. “Please all take a map, in case you _do_ get lost. If that happens just follow the road to the centre of the city, it’s all explained on the map.”  
Lance stepped out of the hovercraft, his friends still on both sides of him.  
The headmistress nodded, when everyone had left the hovercraft, and started handing out the maps, together with the rest of the caretakers. When everyone had a map she started walking, guiding the group to the city center. 

In Lance’s time in the orphanage, he had only been to Eridanus once, and that had been years ago, so Lance couldn’t help but be impressed by the tall buildings around him. Not one of the huge buildings looked the same as another, all of them having their own special design. It was truly beautiful. 

Lance almost lost the rest of the group several times while staring at the buildings, everytime that happened he would run to catch up with his friends, but as he had lost track of the group for the fifth time, he saw a girl sitting on the side of the pavement. She held her face in her hands and wore a beautiful dress, more beautiful than any of the dresses Lance had ever seen before. 

Lance could stop and help her, right? He had a map so hopefully he could find get back to his group after he had helped this girl. 

He strayed even further from his group and walked to the girl, now that he was closer he could clearly hear the soft sniffles coming from her. 

Lance really had to stop meeting people like this.

“Are you okay?” Lance asked the girl.  
She looked up from her hands, her eyes were filled with tears. She sniffed once and brushed over her nose with her hand. 

“I’m fine, I’m just lost,” she answered, sounding quite stable even though she had been crying.

“Okay well, are you also going to the parade? Because I can take you there,” Lance said.

“Would you do that?” she asked, hopefully, then for a moment her features clouded a bit. “I need to go to a specific place though, I don’t know if you know the way there.”

Lance grinned. “Well I have a tool for that,” he said while grabbing the map, and unfolding it. “What’s the place called? I’m sure we can find it.”

The girl seemed to think that over, probably trying to remember the name of the place she was referring to. “I believe it was something like Paracon hotel?”

Lance nodded and looked down at the map, searching for the hotel. He didn’t find a Paracon hotel, however, he _did_ find a Paragon hotel, he decided to place his bets on that. “Do you mean the Paragon hotel?”

The girl’s eyes brightened up. “Yes! Yes that’s the one!”

Lance smiled at her. “Well come on then, let’s go!” 

They walked through the streets together, trying to juggle dodging the cars always flying past, and paying close attention to the map and where they were going.  
Lance had laughed when the girl suddenly let out a high shriek at some dogs suddenly running right past her, and the girl had laughed just as hard when Lance had stepped in a puddle and got his good pants dirty, of course Lance hadn’t found this funny in the slightest. 

These were his _good_ pants!

As they were slowly finding their way to where the Paragon hotel was located, Lance remembered a question that he had wanted to ask the girl, but totally forgot.  
“What’s your name? Mine’s Lance,” he said, grinning.  
The girl grinned back at him. “Mine’s Allura.”

Why did that name sound so familiar?

“Were you named after the princess?” Lance asked, casting a quick glance at the map to see where they had to go next.

“Yeah, well um-” Allura cut herself short in the middle of her sentence, making Lance look up curiously. Allura’s eyes had widened. “This is it! Hotel Paragon!” Lance shifted his eyes from Allura’s face to where she was looking, and saw the large bold letters on an elegant building, that spelled out: ‘Hotel Paragon’. 

Two arms wrapped around him, embracing him tightly. Allura.  
“Thank you so much!” 

Lanca murmured a soft ‘No problem.’. He was starting to realize that he was no longer needed. Allura had found her way to the hotel, and it was time for him to go back to the caretakers, and his friends.

Right when he wanted to tell Allura that he had to leave, she extended his hand to him. "Please stay?! I want you to meet my parents! I like you, you are nice." She grinned broadly at him, making him grin too.

The orphanage could wait. 

He took her hand. She dragged him along, into the hotel, laughing while Lance almost tripped over his shoelaces. 

They went into the hall of the hotel, running excitedly through the big glass doors. 

The hotel was beautiful. There were golden chandeliers hanging from the ceiling, a red carpet on the floor of the lobby, and precise little figures carved into the smooth wood of the furniture. Lance didn't say anything, he physically couldn't. His mouth was agape, and he was unable to close it. Allura, however, was simply walking around, seemingly searching for someone, unfazed by all the riches around her. 

"Allura!" A vast voice broke the silence. Lance whipped his head around, and so did Allura. 

Lance recognised the man. He had seen his face many times, he had seen it in the orphanage every day. The man was one of the portraits on the grey walls of the orphanage. 

The man was the king.

"Father!" Allura yelled out. 

The man was the king and Allura was the princess. 

"Don't ever do that again! Where were you?" King Alfor's voice was smooth, calming, even when he was as worried as he was now.

"I am sorry father, but Lance here helped me get back. He was very kind to me."

Lance just smiled and waved slightly, not sure of what else to do. 

"We owe you a lot Lance, thank you. Were your parents okay with you going with Allura? I could apologise to them if that's necessary." King Alfor's voice was kind, gentle as he spoke. 

"No um," Lance scratched the back of his neck. "my parents aren't alive anymore."

"Oh," King Alfor's gaze flooded with sympathy. "I am so sorry."

"It's fi-" Lance started, but he was abruptly cut off when a woman came walking around the corner.

"Alfor? Was that Allura I heard? Please tell me it was Allura." Queen Adriana's voice was louder than King Alfor's voice.  
"Thank the Gods! Darling, you are back!" The queen yelled when she spotted Allura. She walked up to Allura, hugging her tightly.  
"And you," she said after finally letting go of her. Staring straight at Lance. "You brought her back, didn't you? "

"Yes he did mother," Allura said, grinning at Lance.

"Oh thank you so much!"  
Before Lance could even try to reply to that, the queen had already wrapped him in her arms. 

"Allura, Adriana, darlings we have to go, the carriage is ready." King Alfor's voice sounded muffled, because the Queen's arms were still around Lance shoulders, her face covering his ears.

The Queen let go of Lance soon after the King had spoken. 

"Should I leave then? I mean I will probably find the way back to the city center. The orphanage caretakers will probably still be there, although I don’t think I’ll make it before the Parade starts. I don’t really know where I would have to go after the Parade ends, but I’ll find them somehow-" 

Again Lance's rambling was interrupted when the queen suddenly said, "No no no, if you want you can ride on the carriage with us, you have helped Allura, so it's the least we can do."

Allura smiled widely at Lance. "Yes! Lance come with me! The carriage awaits!" Allura grabbed him and dragged him along, to the corridor that the Queen had come from. 

Lance managed to yell a quick, 'Thank you!' to the King and Queen. 

The carriage was beautiful, just like the hotel lobby, the carriage had gold everywhere, something that looked like angel wings carved into the sides of it, and it also didn’t have a roof so Lance was able to see the red satin seats in the golden vehicle. 

"Wow," Lance breathed.  
Allura's eyes were twinkling. "I know, right? It's pretty cool."  
The sound of people laughing came from behind them, Lance turned around to spot the King and Queen slowly walking towards them.  
Allura took Lance's hand again and dragged him into the front of the carriage. King Alfor and Queen Adriana fondly smiled down at them and got in the back. 

"Allura?" Lance whispered in Allura's ear.  
"Yeah?" Allura whispered back.  
"Ehm I can't see a door? How does it work?"  
Allura glanced at him with a smug look on her face. "You'll see," she just said.

When they had settled in the carriage, Lance heard a sharp whistle behind him, probably coming from the King, and suddenly the carriage moved. Lance could feel them leaving the ground. 

Then they started moving forward. 

Slowly they started reaching the still closed brick wall: not a door, window or even a tiny hole in the wall in sight, but Lance kept hoping that a door would magically show up.

It didn't.

And when they were just centimeters away from the wall, Lance really started freaking out; biting his nails, sweating, and his mind going in all directions. 

They weren't gonna crash, were they?

They couldn't, right?

Lance closed his eyes, waiting for the impact that would surely come.

Only it didn't 

When Lance heard a loud clear laugh beside him, he opened his eyes to careful small slits. Allura was laughing loudly, the King and Queen had fond grins on their faces, and most importantly the sunlight was beaming down on them. 

They weren't inside anymore.

Lance looked back to see if there was a door behind them, but there wasn't, there was just a completely regular brick wall, nothing strange about it. 

"A hologram wall that closes after you go through, it is technically a door, it just doesn’t look like one." the Queen whispered in his ear. 

That explained a lot. 

“Are you guys ready?” King Alfor yelled.  
And before Lance could understand what to be ready for, the carriage flew around a street corner, only to reveal hundreds of people cheering and screaming when they saw the Royal golden carriage. There was a path splitting the crowd in two, protected by small fences, and the carriage moved forward on it, peacefully going through the masses of people standing behind the fences. 

The King and Queen were waving and Allura tapped Lance’s shoulder excitedly, pointing at all the decorations and people attending the Royal parade. Lance had not laughed this loudly in a long time. Not since Keith had left. 

Lance and Allura waved at everyone together, both laughing about the jokes they made with each other, about everyone there, and the crazy banners that some people were holding up. The Royal family was clearly loved. There were a lot of people who looked at Lance in surprise, whispering among each other, not having a single clue who Lance was, and Allura thought this was funny. Laughing at every surprised face she saw. 

Lance suddenly spotted something in the corner of his eye, or rather some _one_. The headmistress of the orphanage was there, behind one of the fences on his left side, looking up at him with a baffled look on her face. Vaton, Lammar, Tragis, Xavier, Niven, and Gio were all right beside her looking up at him with broad smiles, waving frantically. 

Lance tapped Allura on her shoulder and together they waved back at them, the King and Queen seemed to take notice, because they also started waving at Lance’s friends. 

Lance laughed out loud again, his clear laughter mixing with Allura’s. Life was good. 

Until the parade stopped.

Allura was talking to her father, the Queen was nowhere in sight and Lance was alone, sitting on a marble staircase. He knew that he would have to go back to the grey building, whether he wanted it or not. 

Lance was studying one of the big chandeliers hanging from the ceiling, when he heard footsteps beside him.  
“Lance!” Allura’s voice yelled out. “Father allowed you to stay with us for a week!” 

Lance’s eyes widened, to say that he was surprised was an understatement. 

“Wha-Why?” 

“I told father how much I enjoyed hanging out with you, and he said that he would let you stay for a week!”

Allura hugged Lance, but Lance was still too baffled to do anything. 

“Are you sure?” He eventually asked. 

Allura nodded frantically. “Yes! This is gonna be so much fun!”

\----

The stone Lance had gotten from Keith felt heavier in his new pants than in his old ones. He didn’t know why, but it was true. It had been a two days since he first entered the palace and the King and Queen had insisted that he tried on as they called it ‘prince’s clothing’. Lance had no idea of what that meant, but he did know that the silk shirts that he now wore were so much more soft than the old sweaters that he had to wear in the orphanage. Lance didn’t particularly mind the extra weight of the stone, if that meant that he got to keep a little reminder of some of the _good_ times that he had had at the orphanage. 

It also reminded him that in a few days, he would have to go back to the orphanage.

Lance was walking through one of the many majestic halls, trying to find his way back to his room, for what had to be the hundredth time when Allura appeared from a corridor that was located behind a tall pillar. “Lance! There you are! I want you to meet my friends!” She turned around slightly and waved at the people behind her to come out. 

First a boy with slightly tanned skin stepped out from behind the pillar, smiling shyly at Lance. “Hi,” he said. “I’m Hunk, the son of the cook here.”

“Yeah and he makes damn good food too,” said a second voice, belonging to a person a lot smaller than Hunk. “I’m Pidge by the way, sister of tech wizard Matt. Even though, if I’m being honest, I deliver more work than him, most of the time.” She pushed her glasses up on her nose and smiled at Lance. 

“I’m Lance, and I don’t know about you guys, but I could use a bite. Maybe I could even help you cook!” Lance said happily, looking at Hunk. 

“I wouldn’t-” Pidge started but she was immediately interrupted by Hunk. 

“The food that I make has to be made with precision and perfection, the only person I can trust to be able to do that, is me. So if we eat, I cook. No one else even touches the food, until I say so, but thanks for your offer I guess,” Hunk said, finishing his speech with a huff. 

“He does that every time,” Pidge said, and Allura nodded. 

“When it comes to food, Hunk and his mother are the only ones to trust,” Allura said.

Lance quickly came to find that Pidge was right, and Hunk’s food really _was_ delicious.

After that, Lance spent the remainder of his week at the palace with Hunk, Pidge and Allura. Going on little adventures with them, making jokes together, and running around the palace. Pidge even went as far to steal one of her brother’s service robots so that she could reprogram it to say jokes. 

It was fun.

And now it had come to an end. 

It was the last day of his week at the palace and Allura’s parents had called him over to the throne room. Lance knew that he was going to be sent home. The orphanage headmistress would probably be there already, waiting for him. 

Only she wasn’t.

It was just the King and Queen in the throne room, no one else. They smiled at Lance when he came in. Lance shut the door and waited. He waited for the inevitable ending of his adventure in the palace. 

“Lance, it was so much fun having you here, and if I’m being honest, I have never seen Allura laugh as much as she did this week,” King Alfor started. 

Lance nodded, and shifted his gaze to the ground. “Yeah it was fun being here. Thank you for your hospitality.”

The Queen smiled warmly. “You know, Allura has always wanted a brother, we just weren’t able to give her one.” Lance’s head shot up. 

A brother? What did that have to do with him leaving?

“We had some time to think about it and we agree that it would be good for Allura to have a brother, someone she can rely on and play with, other than her friends of course.”

Lance still didn’t understand what they were getting at, and the King must have seen his confusion. “What my wife is trying to say is, that we want you to stay.”

What?! The King and Queen of Altea wanted _him_ to stay? This had to be a dream, a lie of some sort, maybe a joke.

“Are you sure?" Lance asked softly, afraid to be too happy yet.

Again the Queen smiled down at him. “Yes, you are family now Lance.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> YEET YEET.  
> DID YOU ENJOY????????? LET ME KNOW!!!!!!!! I AM A CURIOUS HOE!!!!!!!!!!  
> have an amazing rest of your day/night;)  
> -Amber


	4. problems and voices

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "All for freedom and for pleasure  
> Nothing ever lasts for ever  
> Everybody wants to rule the world."  
> \- Tears For Fears (Everybody Wants To Rule The World)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let's GOOOO ghghgh  
> Also I forgot to mention before that this takes place on Altea, but the food is pretty much all Earthean. In my 'version' (I guess ) of Altea, the people eat Earthean food. Sorry if this caused you confusion in the past  
> MuSiC:  
> Brazil- Dylan Mckenna (for the start of the chapter)  
> The Box Part 1 and 2- Orbital (I listened to both part 1 and 2. These in my opinion really fit the chapter.)  
> Afraid- The Neighbourhood  
> Everybody Wants To Rule The World - Tears For Fears

Lance was playing with the stone Keith once gave him, his thoughts not really in the present, but rather all over the place, reviewing his life, and all that he’d gone through.

One question was always prevalent in all of his thoughts, _Did he even belong here?_

He wasn’t anything special, really he was rather ordinary, not having any outstanding qualities. To be honest he didn’t even really understand why Allura had liked him in the first place. 

And yet here he was, in the palace. 

He’d been here for six years now, growing from ten to sixteen, and he still didn’t get it. 

His thoughts were interrupted, though, when the door to his room suddenly slammed against the wall. 

“Lance are you coming? Hunk’s cooking!” Pidge burst through Lance’s door, not bothering to knock. Lance almost dropped Keith’s stone from shock. “Allura’s already downstairs!”

Most of the time Lance and Allura would have dinner with Adriana and Alfor, but once a month or so, Lance would be allowed to eat dinner in the kitchens, with Allura, Pidge and Hunk. It always was his highlight of the month.

Lance jumped off his bed. “Hunk’s cooking? Well what are we waiting for then?! Let’s go!” 

Lance caught a glimpse of Pidge’s broad grin, when he ran out of his room. He soon heard fast paced footsteps behind him, indicating that Pidge was running after him. They ran through the blue and white halls of the palace, past the countless pillars, and the servants walking among them. Lance knew the way to the kitchens blindly, it was engraved into his mind. He went down the white stairs, and ran left, towards the servant quarters, almost running into multiple unsuspecting servants, who let out shouts and shrieks, when Lance almost tumbled into them. Every time that happened he heard Pidge’s light-hearted chuckle behind him. 

Lance came to a halt right before the kitchen door, and Pidge came to stand next to him. He smiled at her and she smiled back, then in one swing, Lance opened the door. 

The first thing to hit him was the smell.

The smell of fresh baked bread, a rich scent of something herbal, and the fresh smell of tomato. Lance loved every bit of it.

“Time for food!” Pidge screamed, storming to the table in the center of the large kitchen. Allura clapped her hands together in agreement, and Lance took a seat between where Hunk was probably going to sit and Allura. 

Hunk was preparing the plates, saying that he had made something absolutely delicious for them today. He served the plates, and Lance’s mouth could not have watered more when he saw what was on them: bowls with tomato soup in them, two pieces of fresh bread, and a tiny cup of what Lance presumed to be some type of aioli for the bread. 

It looked wonderful. 

“So how’s life?” Hunk asked, while they were eating his food.

Allura spoke up first, “It’s okay I guess, even though I get a lot of social training. I hate it.”  
Lance hummed in response; he got the same training, only less intense, since he wasn’t the crown princess, or prince for that matter. “Yeah it sucks, and I don’t even have it as bad as Lura.”

Hunk sent them a sympathetic look and Pidge just kept looking down at her food, too concentrated to say anything yet. “What I am really curious about though,” Pidge started. “is Hunk’s relation to a certain Shay.” 

Allura and Lance looked at each other and then, at the same time, glanced at a flustered Hunk. “Shay?” they asked simultaneously, both equally confused. 

“Pidge…,” Hunk whispered. 

“They deserve to know, dude,” Pidge said while elbowing him. “Go on, tell them.”

“What’s going on? You know that you can always tell us everything, right?” Allura asked, concerned. 

“Yeah yeah...” Hunk scratched the back of his neck awkwardly. “I just-um” he shot a glance at Pidge, who just looked at him with an encouraging look in her eyes. “I met someone. Her name’s Shay. I really like her,” Hunk admitted, finally looking up at Lance and Allura. 

Lance side-hugged his friend excitedly. “Well that’s amazing Hunk! For how long have you two been dating? I hope not too long, because I’ll be mad that you’ve kept this from me for all that ti-” 

“We’re not dating yet Lance,” Hunk said suddenly, not letting Lance finish his sentence. “We haven’t even had a single conversation yet.” Hunk huffed, roughly pulling one of his hands through his hair. 

Lance and Allura simultaneously looked at each other, all with the same concerned look on their faces. 

“Where does she work? Assuming that she works in the palace, of course,” Allura asked softly, her tone was careful. She was good at this stuff. 

“She’s one of the cleaners, she comes to the kitchens sometimes, to clean of course. She’s just so beautiful, and _kind_. One time she was here with another girl, and the other girl was crying, and Shay, she was just _so kind_.” Hunk sighed dreamily. “But,” he said, sadness crawling up over his features. “she will never like me. Never in a million years.”

“You don’t know that!” Lance immediately shouted, determined to comfort his friend. “Maybe she likes you just as much!”

“Yeah,” Pidge agreed. “I would have an actual conversation with her first. That would probably be a good start.”

Allura nodded too. “If that conversation goes well, maybe you could ask her on a date, nothing too big though, but something small, you know to ‘test the waters’ as they say.”

Hunk pulled his hand through his hair again. “But how do conversations work, I mean how do you do that?” he asked, clearly stressed. “Lance, you know how to do that, right? You’ve talked to girls before.”

Lance wanted to answer that, he really did, but something or rather some _one_ stopped him. 

“What a beautiful palace this is. Truly. It has some beautiful people in it, too. You all seem to shine like stars.” The strange voice took a pause. “What a pity it is, that sooner or later I am going to have to _ruin_ that golden glow.” A voice rang through the halls of the palace, a voice Lance did not recognize in the slightest. It was smooth, reminding Lance a bit of King Alfor’s voice, it was beautiful, but the words it said were far from that.

The group of four jumped up from their seats just as the kitchen turned dark. Not a single shimmer of the blue and white hue, that always seemed to cover the palace, was left.  
“Grab each other’s hands, that way we’ll know where we are,” Lance said, remembering the times when there had been power outages in the orphanage.

“Okay what now?” Hunk asked after they had all slid their hands into each other’s. 

“We have to walk in a line to the door.” Lance had done this a thousand times with his roommate back in the orphanage. He would walk in front to lead them to the door, even though Allura was practically in front, because he was _far_ less important than she was.

“Isn’t that what that creepy voice wants, though? For everyone to come out?” Pidge asked. 

The group was quiet for a bit, all realizing that Pidge was right. The voice whoever’s it was, wanted them to come out. To destroy them.

“Yes, but we cannot just hide can we? These are our people that he is threatening, it’s our duty to protect them. I will not just stand by and watch,” Allura said. 

If they could have seen each other right now, Hunk, Lance and Pidge would’ve shared a look, agreeing, or disagreeing, wordlessly to what Allura said, but because they couldn’t see one another, they were going to have to voice their opinions out loud. 

“I agree,” Lance said.

“Me too,” Pidge said, as determined as Lance.

“Right, yeah, let’s go,” Hunk said, a little softer than Lance and Pidge, but determined nonetheless. 

Lance knew Allura so well that, even though he couldn’t see her, he could practically _feel_ her nodding. 

Lance tugged Allura behind, and she in turn pulled Hunk and Pidge. They were lucky that the door was in a straight line from the table they had been sitting at, meaning that they didn’t have to go in twists and turns to reach the door. 

After a bit of walking, Lance came to a halt, and opened the door.

Apparently the rest of the palace was also cloaked in darkness. 

The curious thing about the situation. though, was that there wasn’t a single sound to be heard, it was dead silent. It was like the palace had turned into a graveyard. No one dared to move, the whole group standing still in the corridor from the kitchens to the majestic main hall of the palace. 

Lance started stalking forward. They had to start moving, making their way to the main entrance hall of the palace, scared of what they might find. 

A purple glow was softly shining ahead of them, and the closer they got the brighter the light became, he could see the floor in front of him, shining softly in the light. The purple glow was clearly coming from the main hall. 

Lance halted, looked at Allura behind him and pointed to the walls on the sides of the corridor, trying to convey the message that they had to try and hide in their shadows, getting some type of cover. Allura nodded once and slowly made her way to the wall on the left side of the corridor, Lance followed suit, and waved at Hunk and Pidge to come join them. 

When all four of them were standing against the wall they started to slowly move forward, trying to get a glimpse of what was happening in the main hall. 

Purple skin and bright yellow eyes, glowing in the purple light of a lantern.

Galra. 

The two Galra were just standing there, waiting, not bothering to move a single muscle. As if they had not just invaded the palace. 

“They’re just standing there, should we, I don’t know, fight them?” Lance asked, unsure of what to do. 

“No, no we can’t do that. We don’t have weapons. They probably do, otherwise they wouldn’t have gotten in, right?” Pidge voiced. 

“Yeah, I agree. Let’s just wait and see if they’ll do anything. If they do, we will come out,” Allura said. She would really make a great leader some day

Hunk and Lance just shared a glance and nodded, silently agreeing with Allura and Pidge. 

“We found them! Main hall!” a harsh male voice yelled. Captain Yielder, the commander of the Altean army. 

What followed were a series of footsteps, belonging to the rest of the soldiers that had probably abruptly left their quarters to look for the intruders. 

Without missing a beat, the captain lurched forward, stabbing one of the Galra in the shoulder, but the Galra didn’t scream, flinch in pain or even fight back, he just simply stood there, face towards the captain smiling, the Altean sword sticking out of his shoulder. The captain’s eyes widened in the purple light. 

Just as one of the other soldiers reached out to stab the other Galra, who was holding the purple lantern, he spoke up. “You can stab us, wound us, hell, you can even kill us, but you will never get to hear what we have to say if you do.” He sounded calm, but he obviously wasn’t the person who had spoken through the speakers earlier. 

The captain held up a hand, showing that he wanted the soldiers not to attack. 

The Galra both smiled. “We come bearing a warning from Lotor, give him the kingdom, or perish. You have two months to decide,” the one who had been stabbed said. 

“Who the hell is Lotor?! You can’t expect me to take this seriously!” The captain yelled out.

“Then don’t. Lotor will come either way,” the other one said. 

Suddenly the Galra with the lantern dropped it. 

As soon as the lantern hit the floor: the Galra were gone, the lights were back to normal, and the lantern was shattered; glass everywhere on the white floor.

“This will end in flames,” Hunk whispered behind Lance.  
And Lance couldn’t have agreed more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry that this chapter is a bit shorter, it had to be done to make sense. I have already started on writing the next chapter, which is gonna be a Keith chapter! :) I hope you liked this even though it was short.  
> Also a little side note: the quote, "This will end in flames." comes from the cover of Wayward son, which is the second book in the Carry on series by Rainbow Rowell. I'm an actual ho for that book, so I thought why not put it in here hehe.  
> As always let me know what you think about the chapter!:)  
> Have an AMAZING day:)))  
> -Amber.


	5. practise and guards

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "And out of the black a figure forms  
> A soldier in the sky  
> With a drop of love  
> Trying to set you free"  
> \- The Black Angels (Young Men Dead)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a pretty long chapter:)  
> Also fecking hell, thank you so much for 100 kudos!!! I don't know how everything works on this site, or if that's even a lot in the general opinion, but for me that's insane and so so so amazing!! Thank you, from the bottom of my heart! :,)  
> MOOSIC:  
> Young Men Dead- The Black Angels  
> Pray For Em- Meek Mill  
> Lost In the Clouds- Keeno

“Can you believe that it has been seven years since I came here, and I’m still shit at hand to hand combat?” Keith asked Meira when he had lost another match against her. They had just finished their fight and were now watching two other classmates of theirs fight. 

Meira chuckled. “Yeah it’s quite funny, even though you’re good at literally everything else, like, dude, you are even decent at tactical thinking, everyone’s shit at that.” Keith wasn’t _that_ good, but he was okay at sharpshooting and tactical thinking, the only thing he truly excelled at was sword fighting, but that triumph was easily overshadowed by how bad he was at hand to hand combat, it was honestly pathetic sometimes. 

“The Test is in a week and I’ve never been this stressed before in my life.” Meira said after a while of silence. 

Keith huffed. “I’m stressed too, but everyone is, and that’s only logical with the way they’re pushing us here.” 

Zenith, who was still their trainer after all these years, kept talking about _the_ test, saying how everyone had to focus and always make the best part of you come out, or you would not make it. _You never know what’s coming for you. At every point in time, surprises can sneak out of every dark corner, so always be prepared. Always focus_ , those were the words that Zenith would repeat over and over again to every student who complained about the stress levels. 

In these moments of high pressure, Keith sometimes thought of his time in the orphanage, remembering how happy and calm he’d been. He couldn’t imagine himself feeling that way now. It grounded him for some reason: thinking of his adventures with Lance, even though they had happened years ago. 

But Keith couldn’t help but wonder, especially during the late nights;  
_What had happened to Lance?_  
He would probably never find out. 

“Keith!” Zenith suddenly called, pulling Keith out of his thoughts. Keith immediately stood upright, waiting for his trainer to continue. “Dryk! Get ready to fight again, both of you!” Zenith pointed at the boxing ring, waiting for Dryk and Keith to come forward. Dryk was great at hand to hand combat, he always beat everything and everyone, so in short: Keith didn’t stand a chance. He shot one last pleading look at Meira, who just smiled at him amusedly and then he looked at Zenith, who wasn’t sparing him a single glance. 

Well shit.

They climbed inside of the boxing ring and Zenith immediately started counting down. 

Dryk tried to hit Keith as soon as Zenith hit zero. He dodged, Dryk’s fist barely flying past his face. 

That was a good start right? 

Keith quickly bent to the left, as Dryk’s fist again tried to strike his face from the right. He started to hope that everything would be alright. 

That was his first mistake.

Keith suddenly felt something hit his face with the strength of a bullet. Dryk’s fist was buried in his cheek and Keith almost fell down from the impact. He forced himself to keep standing upright, but Dryk kicked one of his legs up and tackled him by putting his leg behind his knees. Keith fell over, but instead of giving up, he got up again trying to ignore the throbbing pain in his cheek. He managed to dodge a few more of Dryk’s advances, but not nearly enough, and before Keith knew it he was laying on the floor again. 

Keith still didn’t give up, though, pushing himself up from the ground, getting ready to face Dryk again, but before Dryk could do anything, Zenith’s loud voice rang through the hall. “That’s enough! Keith, I need to talk to you. In the meantime, Ergen and Vraz, you can fight.”  
Dryk shot a glare at Keith. He clearly wouldn’t have minded if Zenith had let him finish Keith. Dryk left the ring heading for his friends, and Keith left the opposite side, heading for Zenith.

The people here didn’t like Keith, except from Meira. He looked human, and that was a problem. Keith reminded the Galra here of the judgement and the discrimination that they had always been confronted with by other species, including the human species. 

“Keith,” Zenith started, sounding exasperated. “you _have_ to get better at hand to hand combat, I mean you’re good at everything else, but if you actually want to pass the Test you have to get better. I hoped that you would get better with time, that’s why I didn’t say anything for so long, but time is pressing. You have _one_ week to get at least ten times better at hand to hand combat.” The urgency was evident in Zenith’s eyes. “Listen,” he continued. “I know that it’s practically impossible to get better in a week, but I wouldn’t ask this of you if I thought that you wouldn’t be able to succeed. I _really_ want you to pass.” 

__Keith just nodded, having no idea how to go about this, Zenith seemed to take notice.  
“I would usually assign you a trainer to get better, but I can’t do that now, it would be unfair to the rest of the students.” That was true, to the other students it would seem like Keith was Zenith favorite, that couldn't happen of course._ _

__Keith took Zenith’s words to heart, and started training, harder than he had ever trained before._ _

__Every night when the training hall was abandoned he would be there, practising moves, hitting the boxing ball, and doing exercises to get his lean body to have more muscular strength._ _

__Some nights Meira would join him, to try and get him to be better._ _

__Tonight the purple glow of the lights was reflecting on Meira’s purple skin, and they were sparring._ _

__“Okay,” Meira said. “We have four days left before the Test. You _are_ getting better, but I’m still winning,” It was true, Keith managed to keep his stand in battle, but eventually he always lost. “and I think I found out why,” Meira suddenly added after a slight pause. _ _

__Keith’s head shot up, but he did not say anything, waiting for Meira to continue._ _

__“You try to focus too much on your strength, when muscular strength isn’t what you’re successful at, it’s your speed and flexibility, using those would make you more likely to win.” Keith tilted his head slightly, processing her words. “Look,” Meira started again. “Just imagine that you’re sword fighting, but you know, without the sword.”_ _

__Sword fighting without a sword? It sounded strange, but Keith knew what she meant, he had to use the same moves and flexibility he used when he fought with his trusted sword. But how?_ _

__“Use your flexibility to dodge your enemy’s moves and try to strike when they least expect it. That’s the only way you’ll win,” she suddenly said as if she had read his mind._ _

__At first it was hard for Keith to adapt his sword fighting methods to hand to hand combat, since sword fighting was something he did on instinct. Eventually he came closer and closer to winning a battle from Meira, even though he never quite made it._ _

__Until the night right before the Test came around._ _

__They were practising harder than ever before, Meira making Keith go in all directions imaginable, having him sweat harder than any of the other nights. They were practically alight with adrenaline, sweat beading on their bodies as they were whirling around, entangled in battle._ _

__Then with one faithful punch coming from Keith's side, he hit Meira’s face, she tumbled backwards, with a look of surprise written all over her features. She tried to strike Keith with her left hand, but Keith carefully dodged, having his right hand punch her in the side, making her fall down to the floor. She tried to get up, but Keith easily held her down, not allowing her to stand, until she tapped out. Keith let go of her and she fell back to the floor, exhausted._ _

__“I think…,” Keith started, catching his breath. “I think I actually won.”_ _

__He looked down at Meira again, a smile forming on his face, she was grinning broadly, her eyes shining in the darkness of the room. “Yeah, I think you did too.”_ _

__\---_ _

__“First, I ask all of you to take out the blades that have been given to you at the very start of your training. If your blade deems you worthy, it will unlock itself at the end of the Test. Second, as said before, your actions during the Test will determine what missions you will get to go on here at the Blade of Marmora, so I urge all of you to do the best you can. Third, you will all enter the simulation capsule one by one, we call your name, and you will enter, it’s that simple. The names will be called in alphabetical order.” Zenith took a small pause in his speech. “Good luck to you all!”_ _

__A girl, who’s name Keith believed to be Veria, took over from Zenith, and started to call the first person forward._ _

__“What do you think the Test will be this year?” Meira asked, whispering in Keith’s ear. They were both holding their own Galra blades, simultaneously looking at the girl, who was entering the simulation capsule first._ _

__“I honestly have no idea.”_ _

__“No me neither, let’s just hope it’s not too hard.”_ _

__Keith nodded and looked down at the small blade that he was holding in his hand, with every person entering and leaving the capsule, a chapter in Keith’s life was getting closer to ending._ _

__Time flew by and soon he heard Veria yell out, “Kamarei!” Kamarei was the person who was always called right before Keith, and Keith realised he was next, anxiety and fright whirling around in his stomach, almost making him ill._ _

__“You’re next,” Meira said. It wasn’t a question, it was a statement. She had heard Keith’s name being called hundreds of times before during these types of occasions, and Keith also heard Meira’s name being called an equal amount of times._ _

__Keith turned towards Meira again. “Yeah.”_ _

__Meira gave a short nod and then did something she had never done before; she hugged him. Her arms wrapped around him tightly and for a second, he froze up, but quickly recovered from the initial shock and hugged her back. Even though they had never hugged before, it felt natural. Meira clearly meant it as a final statement of saying goodbye to their shared time training, having ups and downs together, and fighting alongside each other in the various training simulations that they’d been through. They would probably go on different missions and have completely different lives, but they would still have had this time together and support each other, and even though they had never said it out loud before, Keith wouldn’t trade her friendship for anything._ _

__“Keith!” Veria called out abruptly, shaking Keith out of his thoughts. Meira had let go of him a very long time ago._ _

__Keith looked at Meira one last time, and started walking towards the simulation capsule. Varia nodded at him when he got closer, and opened the door to the simulation for him to enter._ _

__And he did._ _

__\---_ _

__“What should we do?! The princess is still locked in the tower, we have to get her out, but there’s guards everywhere!” A male voice next to Keith yelled. Keith turned towards the man who had spoken, and saw a big group of people all looking to Keith for an answer, He turned back around and scanned the area; a tall tower, with men on the ramparts, seemingly protecting it. Around the tower high walls were rising up from the ground with numerous soldiers on top, who were looking around cautiously. The tower was built atop of a hill, and Keith and the group of men were below it._ _

__Keith could cleary feel the cold metal of a Bayard in his left hand, and after he scanned the area one more time, he suddenly knew what he would have to do._ _

__“Okay, does anyone here have a rope with a hook on it?!”_ _

__“Here sir!” a voice shouted from the back, the voice turned out to belong to a short man, who quickly handed him the rope he wanted._ _

__“Okay I have a plan to get the princess out, but I need a distraction. Can you guys attack the tower and the tower’s wall from the front? While you do that I will sneak in from the back.”_ _

__The soldiers nodded, and as soon as Keith gave a slight nod, they lurched forward, immediately attracting the attention of practically all the guards on the tower and on the wall._ _

__Keith threw himself to the ground, and started crawling forward, towards a small bush stationed on the side of the hill that the tower was built on. All the guards on the tower were so busy with the soldiers attacking the front, that they didn’t notice Keith slowly making his way to the side._ _

__As the sand was getting into his mouth, and the grass into his eyes, Keith refused to stop, he kept crawling, his elbows pushing him forward. It was much slower than running, but also a lot less noticeable._ _

__An eternity later, Keith finally reached the bush, and sat up a bit behind it, peering through the thin branches of the bush, to the large walls and the guards on top. Almost all guards were at the front of the wall, trying to fight off Keith’s group of soldiers, but there were a few still scattered on the sides of the wall, looking around._ _

__This was Keith’s chance._ _

__He took a quick look at his Bayard, and pointed it upwards, to the guard closest to him. In one precise shot he fell down, another guard took notice, but before he could say anything, Keith had already shot him. Now there was just one more guard on the wall to take out, he was on its left, and stood in such a manner that it was almost impossible for Keith to hit him. Keith could only see the top of his head sticking out above the high edges of the wall._ _

__He pointed his Bayard at the small fraction of the guard that he could see, focusing hard, sweat beading on his forehead, and shot._ _

__For a second Keith thought that he had missed, until the man suddenly sunk to the floor, lifelessly. For a brief moment a shudder moved through Keith’s body, but he didn’t allow himself to think of the way the man had looked, because he had work to do. He dropped his Bayard -since he needed two hands to climb- and swiftly unfolded the rope with the hook on it, he tightly wrapped the end of the rope to his wrist, and with one large swing he swung the other end of the rope, with the hook on it, over the edge of the wall. He pulled on it, hoping that it had attached itself to something, and once it didn’t fall off when he tugged, Keith started his climb._ _

__Slowly but surely, while holding onto the rope tightly, Keith started making his way upward, climbing on the smooth surface of the wall. The only thing that Keith could hope for right now was that no guard would see him. He made himself as flat as possible against the wall, so that the chances of his being seen would be minimal._ _

__The distraction did its work though, because not one guard noticed Keith as he made his way onto the wall._ _

__Once he climbed onto the wall, he crouched, observing the grounds below him. In front of the tower, but behind the wall there was a large space, circling all around the tower. The whole space was filled with guards, they were running around, protecting the gate from the people they thought wanted to enter. There was chaos and turmoil everywhere. Keith couldn’t just storm in, he could never take out all of these guards on his own, no, he needed a way to safely get into the tower._ _

__He looked around for methods, when he saw the guards that he had shot, they were wearing a red uniforms, consisting of a red hat, red jacket and a pair of red pants. Again an idea made its way into Keith’s mind._ _

__Keith pulled on one of the guard’s jackets, put the hat that the man had been wearing on his head and also dressed himself in the pants. In disguise he could easily go down the stairs on the side of the wall, leading to the space around the tower. Keith stood up, his red outfit flashing in the morning light. He moved fast, confidently walking around the edge of the wall to the stairs on the side. He moved hastily, but precisely, paying close attention to the steps beneath him._ _

__The place was an even bigger chaos from below, guards running everywhere and frantically yelling for support. Keith broke into a sprint too, blending in with the other guards running around in their blood red outfits. Keith ran all the way, until he was right in front of the metallic door that marked the entrance to the tower. The guards around him were paying no attention to him whatsoever, which made it easy for Keith to slip in._ _

__More of an issue, though, were the guards standing behind it, alert faces turned towards the door, where Keith had just entered._ _

__“No one’s allowed in, except from us, go back outside,” one of the guards said with a harsh voice._ _

__Keith eyed the place he had ended up in. There was one narrow staircase leading up, and one staircase leading down, furthermore there was one hall, where five guards were standing, all watching him._ _

__“Are you deaf?! Go!”_ _

__It was then, that Keith felt that the dagger that had been attached to his belt, was much heavier now. Keith smiled, knowing exactly what the Test wanted from him._ _

__Keith pulled out the dagger that for the time being had morphed into a lean sword, the guards in front of him immediately pulled out similar swords, advancing to him and trying to hit him. Keith dodged a few strikes and managed to take out one of the guards with one precise strike, what he didn’t anticipate, though, was the harsh voiced guard cutting Keith in the shoulder, making him bleed. Keith turned around, while simultaneously whirling his sword around and hitting the man in the throat with the handle, the man gulped, and Keith quickly stabbed him in his midriff, making him fall over. The other three guards were all trying to take jabs at Keith, but he dodged all of them easily. He loosely stabbed the one female guard, making her shout and fall onto the ground. He dodged a few other attacks, before stabbing one of the two guards,that were still standing, in the shoulder, and stabbing the other in the legs, which resulted in one not being able to move his fighting hand and the other tumbling over. Keith took out the guard that had been stabbed in the shoulder by planting his sword into his foot, which made him shout in pain and fall once Keith pulled out the sword._ _

__None of the guards would be a threat anymore._ _

__Keith was just about to go up the large staircase, leading to where the princess was trapped, when he heard it:_ _

__A loud thundering roar, shaking the very foundations of the tower. It came from the stairs that led downwards, making Keith go rigid._ _

__His very first instinct was to run._ _

__To run upstairs, grab the princess and go. Keith didn’t know what kind of beast the roar was from, but it was frightening enough to send anyone into a sprint._ _

__But just as Keith was about to start running, he stopped himself, there was something about that roar, something that was almost akin to pure agony. Somehow in some sort of twisted way, it held some kind of hopelessness that Keith couldn’t quite describe, and so, he did something, that could possible ruin his entire Test results._ _

__He went downstairs._ _

__Keith had no idea what he was doing: for all he knew the beast would come out to attack him, but he couldn’t and wouldn’t go back now, he needed to know._ _

__For a while the only thing he heard were his own footsteps on the staircase, and when the stairs finally stopped, Keith could make out a long hallway, with torches on either side. For a second, he thought of the dungeons in the orphanage. Only in the orphanage it had smelled less of death._ _

__All thoughts in his head were interrupted when Keith almost tripped over something. His gaze flickered to his feet, and with a shock he realized that he had tripped over a skull._ _

__An animal skull._ _

__Now that Keith looked closer he could see thousands of little skeletons and skulls scattered all around the floor._ _

__For the second time that day, a shudder moved through Keith’s body, as he forced himself to step forward, hearing the small bones crunch under his feet._ _

__Keith tried to ignore the sound while he moved, still trying to be as discreet and subtle as possible, even though, the sound of the bones clearly betrayed him._ _

__A soft slither moved through the hall, Keith couldn’t see where the sound was coming from, but it was obvious that it came from the beast that had just roared._ _

__Keith kept moving through the ever stretching hall, making his way past dozens of torches, until he saw something._ _

__Something leathery was reflected by the orange light of the torches, shining. Keith moved closer, not doubting that the beast could hear him approach it._ _

__Now that Keith stood closer, he could make out that the leathery reflection was in fact the beast’s skin, he couldn’t see where the beast’s head was, but he _did_ know that he was dangerously close now. Soft sounds closely resembling whines came from the beast, as if it was hurting._ _

__Keith couldn’t help but take another step forward._ _

___Now_ Keith _could_ see the beast’s face. _ _

__Because its red eyes were staring straight at him._ _

__And the beast wasn’t just a beast, no, this was a dragon. The dragon was rolled up in a ball, clearly afraid of anything getting to its skin. It tried to let out another deafening roar, but the roar quickly declined from powerful to a soft whine._ _

__The dragon was hurting._ _

__And Keith couldn’t help but feel bad for the animal. Who had hurt this majestic animal so badly, that it now was reduced to whining? That simply wasn’t right. He had to do something._ _

__Keith took a step forward again, very slowly making his way under the dragon’s piercing gaze. He treaded carefully, keeping his steps as soft as possible with the skeletons under his feet. He didn’t want to scare the dragon into attacking him._ _

__“Can you please let me help you?” Keith didn’t think the dragon really understood him, but it was worth a try._ _

__The dragon tilted its head slightly as an answer._ _

__“I want to help you, but I need to know where your wound is located,” Keith said._ _

__The dragon took one long look at Keith, and started to, slowly, unfold itself, letting its long leathery tail almost hit Keith in the face. Keith smiled. Maybe the dragon could understand him, and maybe it couldn’t. All that mattered was the fact that the dragon was willingly exposing itself to Keith, distrust was still alight in its eyes, but it let Keith get closer._ _

__Keith again took a few steps forward, inspecting the dragon from closeby. Soon the issue became clear; there was a rope attached to the dragon’s foot, it was cutting into its flesh every time that the dragon moved. The leathery skin around the rope had shriveled up on itself to reveal bloody red skin._ _

__“Shit,” Keith mumbled under his breath, softly. “Can I?” He asked the dragon while pointing at the wound. The dragon didn’t move, but some of the distrust in its eyes disappeared. Keith started making his way to the dragon’s foot. The sword on his belt had transformed back into a dagger again. Keith was afraid that that meant that he had failed the Test, but it didn’t matter. He took the dagger from his belt, but made sure to move extra slowly, letting the blade be seen by the dragon, trying to convey the message that he wouldn’t attack it. The dragon seemed to understand the message, because it didn’t do anything to stop him._ _

__“You know,” Keith said, while trying to cut through the thick rope, that was attached to the dragon’s foot, without stabbing it by accident. “I am actually supposed to be saving the princess that’s stuck in the tower right now, but I’ll do this first.” He didn’t know why exactly he was helping a dragon in a simulation, but it seemed important._ _

__Keith stayed quiet after that, working on getting the rope loose from the dragon’s large claw, until eventually…_ _

__The rope snapped._ _

__Keith smiled broadly at his work. The dragon suddenly whipped away, and when Keith looked at it, he could see that the dragon had a look akin to surprise on its face. After a while of just staring at Keith, the dragon seemed to practically nod at him, pointing his tail upwards. Before Keith could think about why the tail was even pointing that way, the dragon hit the ceiling with it…_ _

__And the ceiling opened up._ _

__A hatch had opened, a hatch that Keith hadn’t even seen before. Normally he noticed everything, but for some reason he hadn’t seen this yet._ _

__The hatch that had opened by the tail hitting it, revealed the morning sky, and Keith could hear numerous shouts from guards and soldiers fighting above. The dragon looked at him for one more time, and unraveled its wings. Wings that Keith hadn’t seen before either. Keith took a few steps back, towards the stairs that he had come from._ _

__The leathery wings started moving, and the dragon hovered above the dungeon floor. Keith stepped back again, not even hearing the small bones crushing beneath his feet anymore._ _

__The dragon flew up into the morning sky._ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Test isn't over yet, but this damn chapter was getting so long, that I just had to stop it.  
> Also I know that dragons don't really exist in the Voltron universe, but you have to remember that Keith is in a sim rn so nothing's real ya know? I was actually planning on finishing the Test in this chapter and getting Keith and Lance to meet each other in the next, but I had to write one more extra Keith chapter, because this was getting too long, sorry.  
> Please bare with me, I promise that they'll meet again soon. :/  
> Love you, have a great day, and never be afraid to give feedback (doesn't matter if it's negative or positive) :)))  
> -Amber


	6. princesses and dragons

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "You pull back the curtains, and the sun burns into your eyes,  
> You watch a plane flying across a clear blue sky.  
> This is the day  
> Your life will surely change.  
> This is the day  
> When things fall into place."  
> -The The (This Is The Day)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look at me uploading twice a week:))  
> No but like this is a bit of a shorter chapter, I actually intended on adding this chapter to the last chapter, but it would get too long. So, i decided to cut it short.  
> mUsIc:  
> This Is The Day- The The  
> Hotel California- Eagles  
> Clint Eastwood- Gorillaz

Keith stared at the dragon flying above.

Until he came to his senses again. 

He had a princess to save.

Keith turned away from the big gap in the ceiling of the dungeons and made his way back to the staircase, where he had come from. He could still feel the animal bones beneath his feet, but because of the sound of chaos from the battle outside he wasn’t able to hear any of it. He ran up the stairs, his footsteps sounding hollow. 

When he arrived back in the front hall of the tower, he immediately spotted the staircase, that led up, to where the princess was located. 

Keith’s footsteps were all that he could hear, the sounds of the battle outside now far away. He walked slowly, not sure of what was waiting for him at the top of the everlasting spiral that was the staircase. 

A man.

A man and a door.

That was all that was there, at the top of the staircase.

And Keith needed to get through that door.

“Hey! What are you doing here?!” The man yelled out. “This is off limits!” 

The man didn’t have any weapons on him and when Keith tried to grab his dagger from his belt, he noticed that it had disappeared. 

So this was it.

Keith knew what was going to happen, but he didn’t know if he was ready for it.

He didn’t bother to respond to the man, instead he just grounded himself on the platform on top of the staircase, and braced himself.

The man lashed out, swinging his left hand in a ninety-degree angle, going right for Keith’s face. He dodged, leaning to the left slightly, letting the man’s fist fly past. The man grunted and tried to hit him again, but this time instead of just barely letting the fist fly past, Keith went for the opposite side of the platform, on the man’s left side. Now, instead of waiting for the man to try to hit him again, Keith let his own fist do the action, hitting the man right in the face. He was fast to react though, because the man replied by taking a swing at Keith and hitting him in the nose. Hard. Blood came gushing out of Keith’s nose.

He barely felt the thick red liquid dripping over his lip, because he was too entangled in battle to notice, the only things Keith could see were the harsh features of the man’s face, and their fists trying to strike each other. 

And when the man broke their cycle of fighting and dodging by hitting him in the stomach, Keith couldn’t help but fall, his back touching the smooth marble surface of the ground. The man grunted and tried to push him down, but Keith rolled away from the man’s feet, and lifted himself from the ground in one fluid movement. 

Keith punched the man. In the throat.

The man spluttered and made a choking sound. While he was distracted Keith hit him again, mimicking what the man had done before and striking him in the stomach. He tumbled over and now, it was the man’s back that touched the floor. 

He tried to roll away from Keith, so that he wouldn’t be able to push him down, but Keith was faster and quickly placed a foot on the man’s stomach. He tried to swipe Keith’s foot away, but was unsuccessful, especially when Keith pushed the man’s chest. 

The man had no way of escaping.

And suddenly, he started fading away beneath Keith. 

Keith had won.

When the man had faded out of existence fully, Keith looked at the now unguarded door. The door that would lead to the princess. 

The door that would somehow lead to Keith’s future.

He turned the doorknob, and walked in.

A girl with long black hair, frightened brown eyes, and dark cheeks, stared back at Keith from the other side of the door.

She was beautiful. 

“What do you want?” she asked, scared but determined. 

Keith suddenly realised that he was still in the enemy’s costume. “I’m here to rescue you.”

The princess huffed, her stiff posture relaxing slightly. “About time,” she said, and Keith was almost sorry that she was just another part of this simulation. “Well how do you propose we escape?”

That was a very good question.

They couldn’t just leave through the tower’s grounds, there were a million guards still fighting, and the gates were tightly shut. On his own Keith could easily have gotten out, but with the princess in his company, this would be more complicated. 

“What the h-” The princess’s voice interrupted Keith’s thoughts, and he quickly shot a look at what she was staring at. 

The dragon.

The dragon was hovering in front of the tower’s window, waiting.

Was it telling him to get on its back?

The window was small but separately the princess and him could squeeze through, and so they did.

Keith climbed first, making sure that the dragon was, indeed, safe, and later helped the princess come through. When they were both settled on the dragon’s back it started flying, letting its wings beat faster and creating speed. The sensation of flight enveloped them, the sheer exhilaration of flying set in with Keith and the princess was laughing, a clear melodious laugh that...

Everything went dark. 

And then light again.

Keith was suddenly in a different room. 

The illusion that was the Test had been broken. 

A woman smiled softly at him, guiding him to a door on the opposite side of the room that Keith was standing in. 

He felt like collapsing, exhaustion slowly taking hold of his body. The woman was talking, but Keith didn’t hear a thing. However he did feel that the dagger that had once been on his belt, wasn’t there anymore, instead there was one lean blade. 

A sword.

That night, he dreamt of dragons, towers, and guards, but instead of the princess Keith had previously saved, there was someone else and _he_ was hiding in the dark corners of the room.

\---

“Keith Kogane!” Keith’s eyes shot open at the sound of his name, his vision was still blurry from sleep, but his ears were sharp. “Register yourself in the Member’s Room, the council needs to talk to you,” a female voice said through the speakers.

The council?

What would the council need to talk to him for?

Only one person from Keith’s class, ever, had had to go to the council, and he never returned. 

Keith’s confusion, however, got pushed to the back of his mind, when his eyes fell on his _sword_. He had done it! He had finally done what he had wished to do all these years. 

He had unlocked his blade.

Keith was grinning at his new-found sword like a lunatic, almost forgetting entirely, that he had to go to the Member’s Room. When he _did_ remember though, he jumped, practically leaping off his bed. He quickly threw on some clothes, ran out of the automatic doors, and sprinted through the purple lit halls, to get to the Member’s Room. 

Once he finally knocked on the door, an almost immediate "Come in!" came from the other side.

Keith opened the door and saw that the Member’s Room was filled with officials from the Blade of Marmora, even council members who were usually not present in the command center were now here: Zenith was there smiling at him softly, Kolivan was there, his face devoid of any emotion whatsoever, Loz was there, calmly studying her nails, even general Gravrov was present, and she was always out on missions. The purple lighting in the otherwise dark room, made everything seem ominous. Keith shut the door behind him, waiting.

“Keith,” Kolivan addressed him. “Welcome. We have matters to discuss.” 

“Is this about my Test?” Keith asked, scared that he had made a mistake.

“Yes, that is, in fact, part of it,” general Gravrov replied from her corner. “You did exactly what we were hoping you would do.”  
Kolivan nodded. “You see Keith, we have a mission, it’s a mission that concerns the Altean Royal family. The crown princess already has a bodyguard, but the prince doesn’t and due to a recent Galran attack on the palace, he needs one.” 

Keith frowned and arched a brow, confusion fogging up his brain. “What does that have to do with me?” 

“Because it was a Galran attack,” Kolivan continued. “the Royal family of Altea reached out to us, since we’re Galran we might know how the attacker would go about things better, but at the same time the bodyguard that they need cannot look too Galra, it would raise suspicion.” 

Keith was still frowning, still not fully understanding what Kolivan meant. 

Zenith sighed. “What Kolivan is trying to say, Keith, is that you would be the perfect fit.” 

Keith’s eyes widened. They wanted him? For such an important mission?

“You don’t look particularly Galra, but you do have a huge understanding of how their minds might work, since, after all, you are part of the species yourself.”

It was true, Keith looked human, apart from his unnatural purple eyes, no one in Altea would ever know that he wasn’t quite so human, but still, this was an incredibly important mission, with the Royal family of Altea at stake.

“To make sure that you were up for the challenge, we looked at your results for the Test, comparing them to how others did, and Keith...you are one of the best performing candidates. You managed to get out of the tower, when no one else did. Well done by the way,” Zenith said. “I, and everyone else at the Blade of Marmora, believe that you can do this, that you are up for the challenge.” 

Keith felt overwhelmed, not sure on how to react to that. He apparently had one of the highest Test results, _and_ they wanted him to do a _very_ significant mission? To keep the prince of Altea safe? 

“Yes,” Loz looked up from her nails. “We all believe that you can do this, but the question is, do _you_ think you can pull this off? Do _you_ want this?”

This could be his life’s work, everything he had ever wished for. The biggest mission of his lifetime: returning to the planet he once called home, and protecting its prince from harm. On the other hand though, it could be his downfall before he had even started, if he made a mistake and the prince lost his life due to Keith’s actions or lack of actions, it would cast a dark shadow over Keith, proving everyone who ever told him that he was useless, right.

After a moment of weighing his options carefully, Keith made a decision.

He wasn’t going to be afraid. 

He was going to fight. 

He was going to take this mission, and do his very best to complete it, he wouldn’t and couldn’t fail. 

“Yes.” Was his simple answer. 

The council nodded and Kolivan started talking again, “That’s settled then, pack everything you need, you will leave tomorrow.”

Just as Keith was about to turn away from the room, general Gravrov spoke up again, “What about the other issue?”

Other issue?

“Oh yes of course,” Kolivan started. “We want to erase as much of your Galran history as we can, we need to pretend like you’ve never even been here, the king and queen know of your heritage, but the rest of their world cannot.” He took a slight pause in between talking. “You need to change your name.”

“Change my name?!” Keith blurted out before he could think properly. His name had always been the only constant in his life, the only thing that he knew would be there, no matter what, and now, now he was going to lose that too. 

“Your name will still be Keith, just not in the eyes of the public. Everyone will know you by your new name on Altea, but we do not plan on actually legally changing it. The name’s just temporary, until the mission’s over,” Zenith added. 

“Right,” Keith said.

“Do you still want the mission?” Loz asked, sounding smug.

Was erasing his identity worth it? 

Keith didn’t know the answer to that, and perhaps he would never know, but he wasn’t backing down now. He had to do this, no matter the cost. He had been given an opportunity and he wasn’t going to waste it.

“Yes,” Keith said again. 

Loz smiled at him. “What will your name be?”

Keith thought about this for a while. His temporary name would have to be something strong, something that said loyalty, but at the same time was easy to say. 

What would he be known as for the time being?

What name would he take as his own?

Eventually Keith’s lips formed a name, a name that would temporarily be his.  
“Shiro,” he said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So...Yeah I ehmm....Sorry. Keith = Shiro in this story, I don't know where I came up with this idea, and I, in fact am sorry to any Shiro fans affected.  
> That being said I hope you enjoyed this lil' chapter, and I hope you have an amazing rest of ur day/night:)


	7. phantoms and second meetings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Wait a minute  
> I think I left my conscience on your front doorstep, oh  
> Wait a minute  
> I think I left my consciousness in the sixth dimension  
> But I'm here right now, right now  
> (Right now, right now)  
> Just sitting in a cloud, oh wow"  
> \- WILLOW (Wait a Minute!)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HERE WE GOOO   
> MUSICC:  
> oh baby- LCD Soundsystem  
> Wait a Minute!- WILLOW  
> Apocalypse- Cigarettes After Sex

“I will _not_ leave! No matter how much you want me to!” Lance stood before Allura’s door, about to knock, when he heard her voice, clear, even though it was muffled. She was rarely ever _truly_ mad, but this sounded like one of those rare times. 

Lance knew that he wasn’t meant to eavesdrop, but he couldn’t help himself, he needed to know what Allura could possibly be so mad at.

“Allura, sweetie, listen, I know you don’t want to go, but this Lotor, he might be a real threat, we need to be sure that you don’t get hurt. You’re the crown princess after all.” Adriana’s voice, although less loud than Allura’s. Lance cringed slightly at the mention of Lotor’s name. The palace had been in a complete frenzy ever since the two Galra left. The servants didn’t stop to chat with each other anymore, the halls were often seen empty, and even the animals seemed to be afraid to leave their respective owner’s side. It was scary, and Lance did not like it one bit, but he had heard neither Alfor nor Adriana speak openly about the apparent attacker until now.

“No! I will not leave! The people need me, now more than ever before, I need to show that I, princess Allura of Altea, am worthy of the people’s affection. This is my chance to show the people that I am not afraid.”

 _Oh_. 

They wanted to take Allura to one of the many bunkers, keeping her safe from this Lotor person and Allura being the person she was wouldn’t go. Lance knew that there was no convincing her at this point: she wasn’t going to leave, not now, not ever, she wouldn’t ever run from her enemy. 

Adriana seemed to also realise this because she sighed. “We’ll think about it, until we’ve thought this through, we’re going to enlighten Ollas about how you wish to stay, and about how he should be prepared for anything.” Adriana’s voice sounded exhausted. Ollas had been Allura’s bodyguard for practically all her life. 

Lance never got one, because he wasn’t important enough. 

He would never be important enough.

He would never understand why he was still here.

Lance was too late realizing that Adriana had made her way to the door, because it suddenly swung open, and he almost fell right into her.   
“Oh Lance!”

“Yeah um hi?” Lance said, ashamed of getting caught.

Adriana smiled at him knowingly. “I almost forgot to tell you, your new bodyguard will arrive sometime today, we will receive him graciously, and I expect you to treat him with respect. We don’t know how big a threat this Lotor is going to pose, but we always have to be prepared.” She finished by loosely hugging Lance and leaving him alone. 

She had just hugged him and for some reason, he couldn’t shake the feeling that she would entirely have forgotten to tell him about his new bodyguard, if she hadn’t seen Lance here.

Just like Alfor and Adriana would’ve forgotten about him if it wasn’t for Allura.

“So, you’re getting a bodyguard huh?” Allura said from the door frame, breaking him away from his rather morose thoughts.

Lance grinned at her. “So, you’re not leaving for some bunker huh?” he retorted. 

Allura returned the grin and opened her door wider. “Come in, annoying brother of mine.”

\---

The light outside was slowly starting to turn orange, when one of the servants came knocking on the door; “Prince Lance,” she started, taking a quick pause to bow. “Your new bodyguard has arrived, the King has requested you to come down to the great hall immediately.”

Allura and Lance shot each other a look and Lance jumped from Allura’s large chair. They had been talking all afternoon, listening to each other’s problems and making simple conversation. It had been peaceful. 

He waved a hand at Allura by means of goodbye, thanked the servant, and left for the great hall. When the guards protecting the majestic hall doors saw him coming, they immediately opened them, not missing a beat.

“Ah, Lance, welcome. Please meet Shiro. He will be your bodyguard for the time being,” King Alfor said as soon as Lance set his first step into the hall. 

Lance’s eyes wandered around the room until they got stuck on one particular person: black hair, dark eyes, pale skin, handsome. This had to be Shiro, but there was something about him, something so _familiar_. He had never heard Shiro’s name before in his life, but something about the guy was… welcoming almost, as if Lance had found something, some _one_.

Shiro raised one eyebrow, not particularly surprised, just expectant, waiting, calculating. There was something _so_ familiar about those eyes, but no matter how hard Lance tried, he couldn’t quite pinpoint it. 

“Lance?” Lance reacted immediately, and shifted his eyes to the King and Queen. “Can you guide this man to your chambers, his room will be opposite yours.”

“Yes, of course,” Lance answered determinedly.   
He turned to Shiro and winked. “Follow me.” The other guy’s eyes widened slightly, but he did what he was told, and followed Lance through the doors, and up the stairs. 

“So, where are you from?” Lance asked to break the silence. 

“From here actually,” Shiro said, casually. He had a nice voice. It was soothing.

“Altea? Really?” As far as Lance knew there weren’t a lot of guards that were trained in Altea, Altea usually got its armies from other planets. 

“Yes,” Shiro said, clearly not meaning to elaborate any further. 

The rest of their journey to Lance's chambers they didn’t speak, neither of them really making conversation. Lance looked at Shiro from the corner of his eye, and as soon as he did, he knew that he wasn't going to have to show Shiro the way again. Shiro's eyes calculated every step he took, as if he was trying to burn the floor and his surroundings into his mind. 

"How old are you?" Lance asked eventually after a long silence.

"Sixteen," Shiro answered, not sparing him a glance.

Lance smiled. "Wow! Cool! Me too!" Only after he had already said the words he realised something. "Isn't that a bit young though? For a guard I mean."

Shiro shrugged. "Maybe."

"Not very talkative huh?" Lance asked, grinning.

To his surprise, a small smile formed on Shiro's face. "No." The word might have sounded short, but the tone in which Shiro said it was warmer than the harsh monotonous one that he had used previously, and that was okay.

They reached the point of having a comfortable silence between them, and Lance welcomed it with open arms, for someone who always had something to say, he was strangely calm around this Shiro person already. Which was weird to say the least.

"This is my room," Lance said when they reached the doors to his chambers. "And this… " Lance walked over to a door opposite the wide white hall. "will be yours."

When Shiro made no move towards either of the doors, but just stayed right where he was, in front of Lance, he spoke up again, "Um get settled in, get used to your new space. I will be in my room."

Shiro quickly nodded, as if coming out of some trance. "Right, yeah, will do. Just call my name when you need me."

\--

“How’s your new bodyguard?” Hunk asked as a matter of conversation. 

“Yeah he’s fine, I suppose, a bit weird though.” Lance didn’t know how he felt about Shiro, somewhere deep inside he was sure that he recognized him, but definitely not his name, it was his _face_. Something about Shiro’s face was so recognisable to him. It irked Lance, but at the same time it felt nice, it felt like home, and that was strange for _so_ many reasons.   
“How?” Allura asked, joining the conversation. 

“I don’t really know to be perfectly honest,” Lance answered, confusion clear in his voice. 

The door slammed open.

“Guys!” Pidge came bursting through Allura’s door. “The funfair comes to the capital in two days!” 

Hunk and Lance looked at each other, immediately delighted. The funfair was one of small opportunities that they had to go out in public together. Allura wouldn’t always go with them, funfairs weren’t really her thing, but Lance always knew that when she _did_ go, she secretly kind of enjoyed it. 

“No way! In two days already?!” Lance yelled excitedly. 

“It’s going to be so much fun!” Hunk shouted in the same tone as Lance. 

“Oh we’re definitely going to be trying the Quick Quiznacks this year. Pidge had them last time remember? They apparently tasted really good. Can we also go into the Lav-” 

“You can’t possibly think that this is a good idea Lance!” Allura harshly cut Lance off mid-sentence. He just shot her a confused look, not quite understanding what she meant: sure she didn’t really like the funfair, but she was usually fine with them going.   
“Lance… ,” Allura said, exasperated. “You can’t be serious.” Lance furrowed his brows even more, still confused. “There’s a murderous group of Galra out looking for us, they literally threatened us a week ago! Going out in public isn’t exactly the smartest thing right now!” 

Pidge, Hunk and Lance shot each other similar looks again, but this time they were sadder. “Not go to the funfair?” Disappointment was almost breaking Lance’s voice. 

Allura stared at him sympathetically. “It’s not a good idea.”

“Wait, but didn’t the Lotor guy say that he was coming in two months? It hasn’t been two months yet right? We can go.” Lance perked up a bit at Pidge’s words. 

“Yeah,” Hunk agreed. “and if we hide ourselves properly, no one will even be able to tell that we’re from the Royal palace.”

“Guys-”

“Yes! We could do that!” This time it was Lance that cut Allura of. “Besides practically nobody has recognized us before.”

Right when Allura was about to speak again, the dinner bell rung, indicating that it was, in fact, time for dinner. 

“Oh! Mother said we would have stew today!” Hunk yelled, the funfair immediately forgotten. “You know how well mother’s stew tastes!” he leapt up from his chair. “You two!” He pointed at Allura and Lance. “Go eat, when you’re done, me and Pidge will get to eat that delicious stew!”

“But-,” Allura started. 

“Go!” both Hunk and Pidge yelled. 

Lance was already halfway to the dining hall when he suddenly remembered Shiro. Shiro probably had no clue what that bell had meant, because Lance had forgotten to explain it to him.

“Shit… ,” Lance mumbled. “Go ahead ‘Lura, I have to go get Shiro.”

Allura nodded and Lance immediately broke into a sprint, eager to get to his stew. He ran up the stairs and through the halls, until he eventually arrived, breathing heavily, at Shiro’s door. 

“Shiro!” Lance shouted, while knocking on the door. 

The door swung open on the second knock and Lance almost tumbled right into Shiro’s arms.   
“Um,” Lance said, distracted for a second. Shiro was dressed in an Altean uniform. It suited him. “That bell means time for dinner, I forgot to tell you that. I believe that as a bodyguard-”

“I’m supposed to stand in front of the dining hall doors until you finish eating, and then I can have dinner myself, yes I know. I didn’t know what that bell meant though.”

“Right, well now you know,” Lance said rather awkwardly. He was never awkward, but something about Shiro’s presence made him feel that way. Once again, Lance couldn’t quite pinpoint it. 

Lance began walking and Shiro followed, step by step. Again the familiarity of it all struck him and it was driving him insane that he _still_ couldn’t pinpoint it. He needed to sort this out, for his own sanity.

The walk to dinner was silent, neither of them talked and they walked slowly. Lance couldn’t even remember why he had run that hard to get to Shiro in the first place. Strangely the walk wasn’t annoyingly quiet, it wasn’t like Lance had the constant need to say anything, it was rather comfortable really. Once they arrived at the big metallic doors that led to the Royal dining space of the palace, Shiro nodded at Lance once and went to stand next to the other bodyguards.

The doors were hurriedly opened for Lance. 

And as he went inside, he caught the smell of stew, and just as sudden as it had come, the quiet, calm Lance was gone again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did it live up to your expectations? I honestly want to know:)   
> Anyhows I'm sorry for such a short chapter, i hope you enjoyed either way:)  
> Have a GREAT day/night.  
> -Amber


	8. pencils and diplomacy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Oh, just when you think you're in control  
> Just when you think you've got a hold  
> Just when you get on a roll  
> Oh here it goes, here it goes, here it goes again  
> Oh here it goes again."  
> -OK Go (Here It Goes Again)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome back ya'll:,) and thank you so much for 1k hits:))) A big thank you to the people who are still keeping up with this story, I love you:,))  
> Music:  
> Bothersome- Jack Stauber  
> Super Rich Kids- Frank Ocean & Earl Sweatshirt  
> Homage- Mild High Club  
> Here It Goes Again- OK Go

“Whatcha doing here kid?” a man standing next to Keith asked. The man was shorter than him, but broad, clearly muscular.  
It was breakfast time and Keith was waiting for Lance to finish eating, standing in front of the big doors of the dining hall. 

“Waiting for Prince Lance,” Keith answered simply. 

“What?” the man scoffed. “Waiting for the Prince, why? And how the hell did you manage to come in?”

Keith had to resist the urge to roll his eyes. “I’m the Prince’s bodyguard.” 

The other man burst into laughter. “Yeah sure and I’m King Alfor,” he said in between his wheezing. “C’mon boy, we both know that you’re way too young to be a bodyguard, let alone, a bodyguard for the _Prince_.” The man slapped him on his shoulder, but Keith didn’t flinch, he just kept staring straight ahead.  
“Look kid, just tell me the real reason that you’re here and we’ll sort this out.”

“I already told you the real reason, you can check with the Royal family if you like.”

The man’s piercing stare turned from sceptical to calculating. “Right.” 

Then the man suddenly swung a fist at him, and before Keith could even properly register, he had already stopped the fist from hitting him. He was holding the man by his wrist, not saying anything, just staring into his eyes. 

The man’s eyes widened. “Good.” 

Keith turned his stare back to the hallway in front of them and let go. The man also turned his stare back and rubbed his wrist with his other hand, trying to get rid of the red spots that Keith had created by grabbing it. 

“I’m Ollas: Princess Allura’s bodyguard.”

The dinner bell rang again, and the doors to the dining hall opened. Keith and Ollas both took a step aside to let the Royal family through. 

“Shiro,” Keith said. “Prince Lance’s bodyguard.”

Ollas didn’t have a chance to reply, because Keith walked away, following behind Lance like he was supposed to. 

_I once knew someone named Lance._  
Keith had thought about this before, but always pushed it away: there was no way that his Lance had become part of the Royal family, it was simply impossible. Of course Keith could spot the similarities, but it was so strange to think about the Lance that he’d known being here, it simply didn’t fit. Orphans didn’t become Princes, it just didn’t happen.

But maybe the similarity in name could be a valid explanation for why walking and talking with this Lance felt so insanely _familiar_. 

Maybe that was the reason why Keith somehow recognized the way Prince Lance laughed. 

Maybe that was just his mind trying to fool him into thinking that this was his Lance.

Maybe.

“What are you even thinking about?” Lance looked at him with a curious expression. “As far as I’ve seen you, you always look like you’re arguing with yourself.” 

Lance was right about that: Keith _was_ always arguing with himself.

Keith didn’t look at Lance, he just scanned the area and mentally noted that they weren’t walking back to Lance’s chambers. They were in a different place in the palace entirely. “I’m thinking about nothing in particular, would you happen to know where we are heading?” 

Lance’s face fell, his curious gaze glazing over with dread. “The library,” he said. “I have to study ‘Royal Diplomacy’. ‘Lura says it’s necessary for me to learn how to be professional and diplomatic, but I don’t want to. Especially not today, I mean Pidge is building a super robot and I’m going to be stuck in the library for the next three Quintents.” Lance flailed his arms around angrily while explaining, he clearly wasn’t too happy with having to actually study. 

Keith found this particularly amusing somehow, because he had to try his hardest to not to smile. “I’m sure Princess Allura had good reason to suggest studying,” he said instead of laughing. 

“Pff right, of course you’d think that. Doesn’t mean I’d have to agree though.”

Keith _did_ look at him then. Did Lance know him? Why would he think that this was something that Keith would say? 

“You’re one of the bodyguards, I mean you must’ve trained super hard to get here. You probably didn’t whine when you had to study.” A strange sense of disappointment mixed with relief flooded Keith. Lance didn’t know him, he just assumed that he’d studied a lot. 

And that was true.

Keith didn’t reply. 

Instead he looked around, engraving the surroundings into his mind: serene white halls, a blue hue for lighting, the whole palace was a mix of modern and ancient. It was truly beautiful. He let his eyes wander around until he saw Lance’s side profile. Even when Lance seemed to be sad, he still looked well… beautiful and _so_ familiar. It was weird.

Sometimes they would pass a servant or a maid, all of them staring at Keith, eyes wide. They had definitely heard of his arrival at the palace, some of them even whispering to one another. Still, there weren’t a lot of servants and with the way they whispered, short and almost scared, Keith couldn’t help but wonder if they were afraid of him or because of _other_ circumstances. 

“How long ago was the attack?” Keith asked. 

Lance flinched. Perhaps Lance hadn’t talked about the attack until now? It was still fresh in Lance’s mind, that much was obvious. “Ehm… like three weeks ago.”

“Right,” Keith said. That would explain why the servants were walking so hurriedly through the halls, the palace was supposed to be thriving around this time of day, but instead it was eerily quiet. People were still scared. 

Upon his arrival the King and Queen had explained the attack, how the Galra had acted: strong, not afraid, not even flinching when knives were pushed in their shoulders, and how they had strangely disappeared by letting a purple lit lantern fall to the ground. It was bizarre. Keith had never heard of Galra, or anyone else for that matter, being strong enough to just keep standing perfectly still when they were stabbed and the lantern was also strange, nobody could just disappear like that, it wasn’t possible. 

“We’re here. The library,” Lance said, shaking Keith from his thoughts. 

Two big metal doors opened in front of Keith and revealed… books. Thousands of books. He hadn’t seen books for ages: everything he had ever had to study had been accessed digitally, but here, here there was just a sea of them: red, green, blue, black, white, they were everywhere. He stared at the numerous shelves that rose up from the ground until they touched the ceiling.

“I know, right,” Lance said next to him. “I don’t know why we still work with books in this place, I mean they’re so outdated, and it takes so long to find what you’re looking for.”

“No, I like it,” Keith said so in awe of everything around him and enthralled by the smell of paper, that he forgot to be indifferent. 

Lance seemed to take notice, because he looked at him curiously, as if Keith was a secret that needed to be figured out. 

It was quiet for a while, neither of them making a move or speaking. 

“Okay,” Lance spoke up eventually. “I’m going to look for the stupid book I’m suppossed to study.”

Keith simply nodded and watched, still in awe, how Lance moved amongst the various towers of shelves. 

He was still admiring the beauty of all the books in the room when he suddenly heard Lance’s voice. “Shiro! I found my book!”

It was weird to hear others call him Shiro and Keith didn’t think he would ever get used to it. He tried to imagine what it would sound like if Lance called him Keith, that would be strange, but so much better. Something about people calling him Shiro irked him, but he wouldn’t be able to change any of it, it was important for the mission to be called Shiro, so Keith would have to learn how to live with it. 

He let his eyes wander around when he walked toward the sound of Lance’s voice, there were books on so many different topics. Normally Keith would just look up the information he needed on his extremely well developed computer; he had never seen such a visual representation of how much information was truly available. 

There was a circle in the middle of the bookcases within which was a round turquoise table, with a ring of white chairs around. Lance was sitting on one of the white chairs glaring at a huge book, as if he blamed it for him having to be here. Keith kept at a distance.

“You know,” Lance said. “If you like reading you can, if you want that is, take one of the books. I mean I’m sure if you return it, it would be fine.” He had probably seen the way Keith had looked at the books. 

“I can?” Keith had always learned not to touch anything that didn’t belong to him.

“Yeah of course,” Lance answered slowly taking a small notebook from his pocket and opening it up in front of the book. 

Keith couldn’t help but smile at this, it was new for him to just be allowed to peak around and take whatever he wanted from the shelves, and he liked the change. 

He searched for something that could be a good read when he stumbled upon a red book with pages that had been dipped in some kind of gold paint, the edges of the white paper shimmering. He carefully took the book from its shelf and turned it around to see the title:

 **The various works of Selvain Riccard**.

The bold elegant letters were worn, this book had clearly been read before, many, _many_ times. Keith opened it and even though the letters inside were slightly faded, he could still read the sentences clearly: it was a book full of fairy tales. 

With the book in hand, Keith returned to the circle in the middle of the bookcases and was not surprised to see that Lance was no longer staring at the book, instead he was scribbling furiously on the notebook’s small pages. He looked completely focused on whatever it was that he was doing. Keith leaned a bit closer and saw that Lance wasn’t just scribbling, no, he was drawing: lines forming shapes where Lance’s pencil touched the paper. 

“What are you drawing?” Keith asked the question before he even properly thought about it. 

“A forest,” Lance said, his face scrunched up in concentration.

Keith nodded and turned his attention to his book, only to have it return to Lance when he suddenly yelled, “Done!” 

Lance was holding up a piece of paper from his notebook, grinning proudly and eyes twinkling. Keith looked at the paper and his jaw almost slacked from what he saw. It was as if a forest had actually grown on the paper, long branches intertwining, moss growing over the ground, covering paths, and leaves being lit up by the use of shadow and light.

It was beautiful.

The only way to notice that it _wasn’t_ a real forest was the lack of color. 

It reminded him of something that was buried deep in his memory, some place that he hadn’t thought about for a very long time… the forest that marked the edges of the orphanage’s territory. The forest made him think of Lance, his Lance, not Prince Lance. 

How was he doing?

Was he happy with his life?

Has he ever been adopted?

“What do you think?” Lance asked, still grinning. 

“It’s really good,” Keith murmured, mesmerised by the drawing, memories flooding him. 

“Thanks!” Lance placed the drawing back down on the table, the grin quickly replaced by a concentrated frown. “It could use some color though.”

Keith suddenly remembered something. “Shouldn’t you be studying though?”

“Nah, ‘Lura will probably explain it to me sometime,” Lance said, still frowning at his drawing. Abruptly, though, Lance looked up, his eyes alight with excitement. “Oh! Pidge’s robot! I can still go and see!” He jumped up from his chair and started running through the library, towards the door. Keith left his spot and started running after Lance.

He followed Lance through various halls, places that, once again, he had not been before, this seemed to be the complete opposite side of the palace. 

More servants were here, all walking hurriedly, carrying things that varied from thin cables to enormous metallic closets. He could faintly hear the sounds of materials clashing and someone yelling. None of this seemed to surprise Lance, he just smiled softly and sped up his pace. 

Eventually they reached a transparent door. Keith could see someone in green clothing sitting in front of the largest robot he had ever seen. Next to the robot there was a guy with yellow clothing, scratching his head. 

“The King and Queen made the door transparent because in that way when guards walk by they can easily keep track of what Pidge is doing. She truly creates the weirdest stuff sometimes,” Lance said while putting his thumb on, what Keith could only presume was, a biometric scanner. “The guy dressed in yellow is Hunk and the person dressed in green is Pidge.”

The door slid open before them and the guy that Lance had called Hunk immediately turned around, his features morphing from a frown into a smile. “Lance! You managed to escape studying!” He turned his attention back to the robot for a second and then back to Lance. “I don’t really understand what Pidge is doing, but it does look cool!” 

Lance walked over to Hunk and lightly patted him on his shoulder. “No one ever knows what Pidge’s doing, I’m pretty sure that Matt doesn’t even know.”

“I would say that’s true,” Pidge said, not turning away from her work. “Who’s the newcomer in the room, though?” 

So, she was observant. 

Good.

“Oh yeah of course! This, my friends, is Shiro. He’s the bodyguard I told you about.” Lance made a dramatic gesture towards Keith as if presenting him, and Keith simply rolled his eyes in response. 

Lance grinned.

Pidge shot one quick glance over her shoulder, before almost immediately turning back to her project. “Nice to meet you dude.”

“You too,” Keith said simply.

Suddenly a hand was extended to him in the corner of his eyesight. It was Hunk’s “Nice to meet you,” Hunk said awkwardly. 

Keith understood that Hunk meant for him to shake his hand so he did. He nodded at Hunk and let go of his hand after one quick shake. “Good to meet you too.” 

Then suddenly the door behind Keith slid open again. 

“Hello guys! Look who I came across!” 

Two girls and a guy came walking through the door. The one that had spoken was recognizable enough: white hair, tanned skin, a long elegant dress, it had to be Princess Allura. The guy was also easy to recognize: it was Ollas, probably here to accompany her. The other girl Keith didn’t recognize, but unlike the Princess, she seemed slightly shy.

“Oh!” Hunk practically squeaked. “Shay! Hi! I mean hello! Ehm yeah hi!” 

Next to Hunk, Lance playfully rolled his eyes.

“Hi!” the shy girl named Shay said. 

“Can you please talk more quietly?! I’m trying to work here!” Pidge had turned around again and glared at everyone in the room. 

Hunk stepped towards Shay, at the same time that Shay stepped towards him. 

“Also,” Pidge spoke up again. “I would advise you not to stand in the middle of the room or by the doorway right now, my new materials are coming through soon, and trust me, you _don’t_ want to be hit by those.”

Keith had already moved to the side of the room, suddenly realizing that he was still holding the red book from the library. Ollas moved to stand next to Keith. 

Lance and Allura were grinning mischievously at each other, when Hunk and Shay went to stand together. 

Pidge stayed true to her word because soon enough the transparent door slid open again to reveal numerous servants carrying wires, cables, various different sized metallic boxes and long plates that barely fit through the slender door frame.

Keith could see why people wouldn’t want to be hit by those. 

“Thank you,” Pidge said, not looking up from her work on the apparent robot, “You can just put them down in the middle of the room.”

“So,” Ollas started next to him. “you really are who you said you are.” His voice didn’t sound apologetic, just factual. 

“It appears so,” Keith answered not really wanting to continue the conversation or _any_ conversation for that matter. 

Ollas simply nodded, apparently understanding Keith’s intention of ending their talk, if it even could be called that.

Keith opened the book that he was still holding, the gold edged pages worn. He was curious as to _why_ this book was so worn. Was it really that good?

He was just about to start reading the first fairy tale that was mentioned in the book, when he suddenly heard Lance’s high pitched squeal, followed by a soft humming noise. 

“It’s working! Pidge, it’s actually working!”

“I’m aware that it’s working, I made it,” Pidge said, and even though the words themselves were harsh she said it in a playful tone. It was obvious that they were really good friends.

The soft humming noise was coming from the robot in the middle of the room; its eyes were lit with a faint green light and the metallic fingers on its left hand twitched slightly, it didn’t do much else, though. 

“I _will_ need to advance it so that it actually starts doing something,” Pidge murmured to herself. 

“But it’s already doing something! Look! Its hand is moving!” Lance pointed excitedly at the twitching fingers, and Keith felt his lips turn upwards just a tiny bit, for a short moment. The only witness being Ollas, who kept staring straight ahead.

“Yes, I think she knows that, Lance, but I also think she meant that she will have to advance it so it would be able to do _more_ than that,” Allura said fondly.

\--

Keith didn’t get around to reading the red book until he got to his room deep in the night. Once Lance had gone to bed it was mandatory for him to stand on guard in front of his door for another three Vargas before heading off to his own room, and Lance had stayed in the robot room for a _long_ time, which resulted in Keith not getting to bed until very very late in the night. 

Not feeling like sleeping yet, and not particularly excited to think too much about the Blade of Marmora or of how he missed Meira, Keith opened up the book once again, finally able to read the first fairy tale.  
He faintly remembered it being about a girl on a lonely island, wishing for someone to share her life with. 

And deep inside, hidden behind all his training, Keith also wished for someone to share his life with.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again thank you for reading, the comments make me feel warm and fuzzy inside. As always, lemme know what you think.  
> Love ya, have a great day/night:))  
> -Amber


	9. parallels and lanterns

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "So baby take my hand  
> Walking down the avenue  
> I know you wanted Paris  
> I guess that this'll have to do"  
> ~Mac DeMarco (European Vegas)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! Sorry for the late update, but here ya'll go:) I truly hope you enjoy!!  
> MUSIC:  
> GONE, GONE/THANK YOU- Tyler, The Creator & CeeLo Green  
> European Vegas- Mac DeMarco  
> Goner- Twenty One Pilots

Tonight was the night of the fun fair and Lance needed to get out of the palace. 

Earlier in the night he had padded to the door of his room to hear when Shiro would finally leave his guarding post for the night, so currently Lance was crouched down by the door, to be able to catch the sound of Shiro going to his room for the night. It was only when his legs were starting to ache from crouching so long that he heard a soft sigh and footsteps slowly leaving.

Lance could barely contain his excitement when he heard the door on the opposite side of the hall close. He jumped out of his crouching position and grabbed a brown cloak from the corner of his room, the same cloak that Pidge and Hunk would be wearing. He slowly wrapped the cloak around his shoulders, fastening it with a clip at the front, and let the hood at the back of the cloak cover his face. He would certainly not be recognizable like this.

Lance opened his door slightly, slipping out stealthily, and closing the door behind him with the least amount of sound possible, he didn’t know how good Shiro's hearing was but he didn’t want to test it, especially not today.

He slid through the halls of the quiet palace, slowly at first, but speeding up once he got closer to the location where he would meet Hunk and Pidge. Everything seemed so different at night, the halls covered in dark shadows, that appeared to move when he wasn’t watching. The blue light that was always lit in the halls didn’t help either, casting a strange neon glow over the floor and ceiling.Weirdly proportioned statues were propped up against the walls, their hollow eyes seeming to follow him as he made his way through the halls.

He counted the weird looking statues until he came to a halt next to the fifth one. This was where he would wait for his friends. 

Lance almost jumped out of his skin when he heard a shuffling noise next to him.  
“Geez it’s only me, calm down,” Pidge’s voice whispered. Lance wasn’t able to see her face properly, but he just _knew_ that she was rolling her eyes at him, under her hood. 

“Guys? Are you there?” Hunk was clearly trying to whisper, but was failing rather obviously. 

“No,” Pidge said. “We’re not, we’re just two hooded creeps lurking around near a half broken statue in the Royal palace.”

Hunk didn’t answer, and Lance knew that he was probably seriously considering the option. 

“Yeah Hunk,” Lance said consolingly. “it’s us.” 

“Well now that we’ve established that, let’s get going. I need those Quick Quiznacks, I’ve been waiting for for a year,” Pidge nudged Lance with her elbow, her voice sounded a bit softer than before, probably regretting her harsh words to Hunk.

Then Lance heard Pidge’s soft footsteps padding across the floor, urging Lance and Hunk to follow. 

If they could have seen each other, Hunk and Lance would’ve shrugged at one another and followed her together, instead they just followed Pidge quietly. They could practically find their way to the kitchen door blindly, their capes swishing around them and their footsteps echoing through the otherwise empty halls.

“Lance can you… ?” Hunk asked, and Lance knew what he meant. He softly pressed his thumb against the glowing screen of the biometric scanner. The scanner beeped and slowly the door opened, revealing the kitchen’s gardens.

“Right, okay, let’s go,” Pidge said nervously.

They made their way into the poorly lit gardens, walking over the grassy, muddy paths: it wasn’t ideal for their outfits, but it was the safest way to town. Once they had reached the end of the gardens and stood on the main road, Hunk started leading the way; he knew it best, since he had to go to town for supplies a lot. 

When they were at a safe distance from the palace, they stopped trying to be quiet and walking softly, instead they were now taking rough fast paced steps, talking excitedly amongst each other. 

“I really want to go into the Lavren tunnel this year, well… after I’ve tried Pidge’s favorite snack of course,” Lance said, winking at Pidge. They were able to see each other now, the lighting on the main road was fine, their figures casting long shadows on the ground. 

“Yeah the tunnel is cool. Oh! And the Spinning Lion! I’ve always wanted to try that!”

“No, no, no, I’m so _not_ doing that again,” Hunk said. “I’ve been with my mom once, it wasn’t a great experience.” He paused. “I could literally vomit just thinking about it.”

“Please don’t, but if you do, consider throwing up on Lance instead of me.” 

“Hey! I’ll have you know-”

“Look!” Hunk shouted, cutting Lance off.

Both Pidge’s and Lance’s stares directed themselves where Hunk was looking. Lance saw red and blue lights peek through the branches in front of them, and now that he payed attention he could hear excited shouts coming from behind the trees. 

The trio grinned excitedly at each other as they pushed aside the branches to reveal… an overwhelming amount of lights: red, blue, purple, green, it was incredibly pretty. People were running excitedly across the capital’s main square, trying to get to the best attractions before the next round started. There were various booths all filled with the most interesting products or games. And as far as Lance could tell, every tiny spot on the square was occupied with something to do. 

“They really outdid themselves this year,” Hunk said next to Lance.

“Well,” Pidge said with a grin, after a while of silent staring had passed again. "Are we going in?” 

All three stepped out onto the square, the scent of the hundreds of different snacks immediately hitting them, and they slowly began to walk, trying to find the Quick Quiznacks that they had been wanting to try out. 

Pidge, however, suddenly halted in front of a booth that very much, did _not_ sell the snacks that they’d been looking for, instead it was a rusty old place, selling even rustier and older things. Pidge was staring intently at something akin to small blue light, sitting on the counter. 

“What are you doing?” Hunk whispered at her, sounding as confused as Lance felt. 

“Just wait.” she answered, before following that up by talking directly to the owner of the booth. “Excuse me, sir?” 

Huh. 

Lance didn’t think that he had ever heard Pidge call anyone ‘sir’ before. 

That was concerning. 

“Yes?” the old scruffy man behind the counter asked harshly, arching one of his bushy brows in the process. 

“How much does that lantern cost?” 

“That ol-” The man scraped his throat. “I mean, this ancient piece?” he asked pointing at the lantern.

“Yes, yes that,” Pidge said impatiently.

“Right ehm, I would say about ten Groggeries, which is a very good deal for this beautiful light.”

Pidge reluctantly handed the man the ten notes from her pocket and carefully took the lantern from the counter, then she retrieved a small brown bag from underneath her cloak and put the blue thing in.

“What was that all about?” Lance asked as soon as the man wouldn’t be able to hear them anymore.

“Nothing… ,” Pidge said softly, deep in thought. “Just wanted to test something.”

Lance furrowed his brows, but didn’t get a chance to reply, because Hunk suddenly started yelling.

“Guys! There! The Quick Quiznacks!”

A little further on the square there was a crammed booth, people were walking all around it yelling excitedly as they got their orders and soon the rich creamy scent of the snack reached the trio, making all other thoughts they had had beforehand disappear. 

Lance grinned and started running towards the booth, immediately followed by his friends doing the same. 

They arrived at the booth, all out of breath and went to stand at the back of the queue. They were now standing behind an old woman with two smiling children by her side. Lance couldn’t see the faces of his friends, but he knew that they had the same soft smiles on their features when they looked at the older woman patting one of the kids on his head. The woman turned around, slightly tilting her face towards Lance and her eyes widened. 

“Tonight,” she said suddenly, looking Lance in the eye softly, clearly not talking to the child next to her anymore. “you will need protection of the person you always protected.” The woman’s fond smile didn’t falter, but Lance’s did, confusion now overtaking his features.

“I could,” the woman continued. “ask you to leave for your own safety, but I know you wouldn’t.”

“What?” he asked nonsensically. 

But the woman just smiled at him again and turned her attention back to the child.

Lance looked to his friends for help. “What just happened?” he hissed to Hunk next to him. 

“Well,” Hunk started and Lance was surprised that he didn’t sound confused at all. “I tickled that child and he laughed and then the old woman gave the three of us each some candy, don’t you remember?” 

Lance looked down at his hands that were now filled with candy. “Yeah, yeah of course I remember.”

He really didn’t remember.

Had he just imagined everything that the woman had told him? 

Was he going insane? 

Lance felt like he was drowning in his thought. Soon, they reached the front of the queue and were now second in line. The old woman was ordering and just as she walked away with the two children, she turned around to Lance and smiled at him knowingly, but it was gone so quickly that he couldn’t help but wonder if it had been his imagination. 

Meanwhile Pidge was ordering them their snack, and nudged Lance in the side with her elbow once they got it.

“Lance? Are you okay?” she asked softly with a sense of concern, that she rarely ever showed now displayed in her voice. 

“Yeah, fine. Let’s eat!” Lance grinned with fake excitement, that soon turned into real excitement when he remembered what he was about to eat. 

“That sounds like my kind of plan,” Hunk said.

They each took one of the round white snacks out of their package, the creamy scent now filling their lungs, and practically making them drool. Lance popped his bite into his mouth and soon the rich heavy taste enveloped him. The food melted on his tongue, and as soon as Lance swallowed, he immediately yearned for more. 

“That was good,” Hunk said, still in awe. 

“You bet! I can’t believe it’s been a year!” Lance said, equally as excited as Hunk was about the Quick Quiznacks. 

They wandered around on the square for a while, not having a clear direction of where to go, just peacefully enjoying their night and making casual small talk. The multi-colored lights made their hoods and cloaks light up, giving them an almost spooky vibe. And Lance couldn’t help but notice how the kids avoided them, clearly a bit scared of their closed off appearance.

“Hey Lance! Look!” Hunk suddenly shouted. “You wanted to go in there, right?” Lance looked at the place Hunk was pointing out and soon noticed the big bold letters spelling out: ‘Lavren Tunnel’, above a tall broad gate. 

The Lavren Tunnel was notorious for being a mystery: every year was different; different decor, different people, different theme, sometimes there were soft themes like love and friendship, and then passing through the tunnel wasn’t hard or scary at all, but there were also themes like adventure and horror, where you needed to do either risky tasks or tasks in which you were jumpscared everywhere you went. It was one of the biggest attractions every year. 

Lance took one last quick look at the bold red letters above the gate, before excitedly running to the ticket booth. “Let’s do this!” 

At the ticket booth there was a lady who looked about as bored with her job as Lance was with Royal Diplomacy. She slowly handed Lance three tickets after he paid her. 

“Have fun,” she said drily, before opening a door behind her, that led to the insides of the tunnel. 

The last thing he remembered before he couldn’t see anything but thick white mist was Hunk wishing that the tunnel wasn’t going to have a horror theme this year. 

“The path of desire is a dangerous one,” a booming woman’s voice rang through the mist, it filled up the room, and it echoed through the fog. “People get lost every day in between reality and desire.” 

“But at this moment, it isn’t about the others. It is about _you_.” The voice took a pause, giving Lance a short moment to try and consider where his friends were, before she continued, “The question is: will _you_ lose track of reality? Will _you_ get lost in the dreams of desire? Or… maybe just maybe… will you make it out?” 

Lance tried to register what she was saying, the words not making much sense in his head, but before he could even begin to comprehend what was happening, the mist started shifting. 

“Lance! You're home!” 

He recognized that voice.

He could never forget.

His sister. 

“Veronica?”

“Yes you dumbass, who else? Now are you coming? Mamá is waiting.” 

“Mom’s alive? You’re alive?” Lance felt broken, confused. 

Could this be? Was his sister here?

Veronica rolled her eyes. “Yes! You can see that can’t you?! Why wouldn’t I be alive?!”

Lance wasn’t able to answer that. Why indeed. He couldn’t remember.

He was home at last. Right?

Veronica grabbed his hand and dragged him along. “We have to hurry, you know how mamá gets when we’re late for dinner.”

Yes he did know. 

He had always known. 

Suddenly a voice buried deep within his memory came out of nowhere: rich and filled with emotion. A voice he would always recognize. “Mi hijo! Mi bebé varón! You are home!” Before he knew it, his mother’s strong arms were wrapped around him, at first Lance couldn’t contain his happiness, but then it very slowly began to dawn on him that something wasn’t right.

Something was wrong.

His mother’s arms didn’t feel right, they had always felt like home. Lance pulled himself out of his mother’s grip and looked her in the eye. 

“You aren’t my mother,” he said, the illusion slowly falling apart. Everything came rushing back to him: the illnesses, the screaming, his mother, his _real_ mother telling him to leave with her last breath. “Because my real mother is dead.” 

The fake mother’s smile turned from fond to wickedly vile in the span of a second. “What do you mean? I have always been your mother!” She paused to stare him in the eye, without blinking, not once. “Show him Veronica.”

Suddenly Lance was yanked out of his fake mother’s tight grasp by his hair, his head was pulled downwards in one fast movement, and now he was positioned in such a way that he was looking directly into Veronica’s twisted and contorted face. 

“You are not my family,” Lance whispered. 

“Am I not? I think I would know. Now you’re just deliberately trying to hurt my feelings Lancey Lance,” she said mockingly, a false grin almost covering her entire face. Her hand, that was still tightly wrapped in Lance’s hair, pulled his head down even further, forcing Lance’s body down on the ground. 

He didn’t know that she had raised her other hand into a fist before he felt the impact, her fist harshly hit his stomach and Lance heaved on the floor, blowing all the air in his body out. 

“I’ve missed you Lance,” a softer voice said from behind Veronica. 

It was unmistakably Keith. 

But it couldn’t be _his_ Keith, because _his_ Keith didn’t fight Lance with stones right?

It was then that Lance realized that he was completely stuck.

This was how he was going to die. 

He could feel a thick oily substance forming on his stomach, it smelled like iron and not even moments after the smell had hit him, small black spots started forming in front of his eyes. He could still see Veronica raising her fist and Keith hitting him with stones, but they were starting to fade.

And right before he faded into oblivion, he simply heard a faint whisper, like wind caressing his ear. 

“Tell them that Lotor said hi.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So how was it?:) I know I ask this every time, but please lemme know what ur thoughts are!:)))  
> Have an amazing day!  
> -Amber


	10. protection and mystery

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Words, playing me deja vu  
> Like a radio tune I swear I've heard before  
> Chill, is it something real?  
> Or the magic I'm feeding off your fingers"  
> ~Duran Duran (Come Undone)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey:)) welcome back.  
> Let the panic ensue  
> BuT fiRsT MuSiC:  
> Home- Depeche Mode  
> Protection- Massive Attack & Tracey Thorn  
> Come Undone- Duran Duran

“Shiro! Shiro! Wake up! It’s Lance!” 

Keith shot up on his bed, his blanket falling off and his pillow roughly pushed to the side. 

“What?! What happened?!” Keith now recognized the boy standing next to his bed, it was the guy that Lance had earlier introduced to him as Hunk. Concern was written all over his face, carving lines in his forehead. 

“We-we were at the fair and I don’t know, we went into the Lavren tunnel and-and Lance he-he… ”

“What happened to Lance?!” Keith was up on his feet in no time, looming over Hunk. 

“He-he… I don’t know. Come. Please,” Hunk said with a pleading look in his eyes. 

“Lead the way. Quick.” 

Hunk nodded eagerly and started running, a brown cloak swishing around his feet, and his steps echoing through the empty corridors of the palace. Keith ran after him following directly in Hunk’s footsteps. They passed statues, halls and endless strips of soft neon blue lighting. The farther they got from Keith’s room the more narrow the corridors became. Hunk passed corner after corner before finally coming to a halt in front of a narrow door. Hunk hurriedly pressed his thumb on the scanner, seemingly not caring what consequences it might have if the King and Queen would check the scanners and see that he’d been out this late. The door opened and they ran through. 

They proceeded to run over muddy paths leading up to a paved road. They ran up the road passing all sorts of plants, and Keith kept track of all of it, printing these surroundings into his mind. 

“Here,” Hunk eventually said, out of breath, he pushed aside a branch and revealed lights as far as the eye could see, surrounded by booths and attractions that people rushed to attend. “Come, this way,” Hunk said as he continued to run over the packed square. They passed booth after booth all selling the most interesting stuff, but Keith couldn’t quite pay attention to all of it, his mind was reeling over the possibility of Lance being in danger. 

Suddenly Hunk came to a stop in front of a closed gate with the big bold almost ominous letters above it spelling out: ‘ Lavren Tunnel’. In front of the gate there was a woman who was yelling at various people outside that they were closed and not permitted to let anybody else enter. The woman’s eyes shifted to Hunk and Keith and she immediately stopped yelling and came walking towards them hurriedly. 

“Come,” she said curtly, as she opened the gate slightly to let Hunk and Keith through. She shut the gate again and glared at the people that were left in front of the gate one last time before walking away from the gate. Instead of walking towards the big building that, Keith could only presume, was the tunnel she made her way to a smaller side building. 

“While you were gone,” she told Hunk. “we took him to my personal caravan.”

Hunk nodded and mumbled a soft thank you, and just like that they were quiet again, letting the woman open the door to the small caravan in silence. 

“Shiro! Thank the Queen, please come in!” Pidge’s voice had the sharp edge of concern, that left no room for the sarcasm that Keith had heard in the Robot room just earlier the same day. 

Pidge led him to a narrow door and opened it with a frown on her face. Keith hurriedly stepped into the small room and immediately noticed how strangely _serene_ it looked. 

Moonlight shone softly through the small window on the side of the room, it reflected on a face - Lance’s face - and caressed his features. If Keith didn’t know any better it would’ve looked as if Lance was sleeping. 

But he most definitely wasn't. 

Keith shook himself out of his slightly mesmerized trance and rushed to Lance’s bedside. Lance’s face was pale, his usual tan almost entirely left his face, and when Keith lifted the blanket, that was draped on top of his body, in one sharp pull he saw something he wished never to see again. 

There was a lot of dry blood. 

And in between the dry patches of blood that clung desperately to Lance’s pale skin, a rainbow of multi-colored bruises, that were all seemingly staring at Keith. 

“We don’t know what happened to him,” Pidge said, her voice small.

Keith turned to her slightly, and saw that she was accompanied by Hunk. 

“We went into the Lavren Tunnel and came out unscathed, while he-” Hunk’s voice cracked. Pidge put her arm on his shoulder, this seemed to give him the strength to continue. “He came out looking like this.” 

“What happened when you went in?” Keith asked, forcing his voice to sound calm.

“The Lavren Tunnel has a different theme every year, this year’s theme was desire,” Pidge said, while rubbing her hand consolingly over Hunk’s shoulder. “At first there was a lot of fog, and we weren’t able to see each other anymore, then a woman began to speak, basically telling us that desire was dangerous and that we should try to break away from our desires to get out. For me the desire that I had to break away from was my brother and me finishing the super robot together. It wasn’t that hard and it certainly didn’t end with me getting beat up.”

“Yeah and for me,” Hunk said blushing slightly. “It was me and Shay going on a date.”

Pidge nodded. “So, nothing too big for the both of us, we don’t know what Lance saw, he never woke up. We have no idea what he could possibly desire to have him beaten up like this.” She frowned. “There had to be something else amiss.” 

Keith nodded and turned his face back to Lance. “We need to take him back to the palace, that’s for sure.” 

Hunk and Pidge shared an uncomfortable look, but nodded nonetheless.

Keith slowly realized why they had looked so uncomfortable and had to resist the urge to roll his eyes. “We’ll slip back in the same way we came. It’s still really dark out so I don’t think anyone will notice us, or be walking in those specific corridors at this time of night.”

Pidge and Hunk perked up at this. 

“Thank you,” Hunk said, heartfelt. It was obvious that they would try to get their friend back to the palace as fast as they could either way, but the additional advantage of not losing their jobs over being noticed was a definite bonus. 

Keith nodded and immediately leapt into action: he carefully lifted Lance from the bed, making the moonlight on his face shift, and began to walk to the entrance of the caravan. What worried Keith most was the fact that Lance didn’t move, apart from his shallow breathing and the tiniest beat of his heart that Keith only felt when he pressed his hand against Lance’s chest, he didn’t move at all: not when Keith was circling the square hurriedly, trying not to be notticed by the people on the square, not when they were rushing over the long road back to the kitchen garden, not when they were trying to find the right way over the muddy paths in the garden, and not when they slipped through the halls of the palace on their way to Lance’s chambers. 

Keith couldn’t take his eyes of off Lance.

And maybe that was purely because he couldn’t afford to lose his first mission.

Or maybe it was that strange familiar feeling that he got whenever Lance was around.

Either way, Keith couldn’t really bring himself to care right now. 

For a second Keith stood in front of Lance’s door, unsure of what to do: he wasn’t allowed to enter the Prince’s chambers. But he quickly got over his doubt and opened the door in one smooth swing. 

Pidge and Hunk followed him inside, but he barely even noticed, too busy placing Lance on his bed.

He _did_ notice them, though, when Hunk spoke up, “What if he never wakes up?” Hunk’s voice sounded small, scared of all the possibilities.

“He will,” Keith answered without turning away from Lance. 

None of them said anything after that, all three sitting quietly around Lance’s bed.

It was then that Keith shifted his eyes from Lance to his nightstand.

It took him just a split second to notice something there: a very specific object, an object that Keith hadn’t seen for a _long_ time, and didn’t think that he would ever see again.

It was a stone.

Not just a stone.

It was a stone that Keith could recognize anywhere, at any point in time: everything about it was familiar, the shape, the colour and even his own sloppy handwriting. 

A surge of something that he could only describe as sheer insanity moved through his body: a rush, something that couldn’t be denied, but was gone again so fast, that if it wasn’t as strong as it was he wouldn’t have noticed. Prince Lance was _his_ Lance: the Lance that he had come to see as his dearest friend in all of his dreary childhood, someone that was always at the back of his mind. 

Memories came flooding back to him: the forest behind the orphanage, that was so similar to Lance’s drawing, the way that both Lances laughed in the same way, the blue of his eyes that shone as bright as the blue of the Lance that Keith had known in the orphanage. 

Keith hadn’t felt this overwhelmed before, ever. 

His thoughts didn’t seem to know in which direction to go, they were all over the place, his usual organized, aware self, was gone, dissolved in a sea of memories. 

Then came the sadness: Keith realized that he could never tell Lance, that he was _Keith_ , because Lance thought of him as Shiro. Only the King and Queen knew about his true identity here, and his mission couldn’t be jeopardized, especially not if _Lance’s_ life was on the line. 

But then again, it was already on the line. 

Keith felt his palms go sweaty with a clinging desperation: Lance _couldn’t_ die, not now. Not now that Keith had finally figured out what he should’ve figured out such a long time ago. 

“He will wake up,” Pidge said determinedly, looking straight at Keith, as if she had read his mind.

“I know,” Keith said, because it seemed as if Pidge’s statement demanded an answer. 

\--

Hunk and Pidge had both dozed off somewhere during the night and the sun was rising, casting pink and orange light over the room and the bed.

And Lance’s ring finger moved.

It could’ve been a strange figment of his imagination from his tired eyes, but then, Keith saw Lance’s thumb tremble slightly.

Keith almost jumped up from his chair, but barely managed to contain himself and instead calmly raised from the chair to stand by Lance’s bed. His bed was decorated with white satin sheets and blue curtains softly waving in the slight breeze that came in from Lance’s window, it was elegant and serene just like everything else in the palace. 

Without warning Lance shot up in his bed.

“Lotor! Lotor! I-I”

Keith pressed his hand against Lance’s shoulder in a reflex, guiding him down to the mattress again. 

“You have bruises everywhere, be careful,” Keith said softly. 

Of course Lotor had something to do with this. Keith didn’t particularly want to believe it, because that would mean that a whole lot more was wrong than just a fun fair attraction gone rogue. There was intent behind this.

More specifically: Lotor’s intent.

“I-I, Lotor he--” 

Keith had never before heard Lance rendered speechless, he always had something to say. 

“Lance!” Pidge yelled out, clearly awake now. “You’re back!”

“Wait what?” Hunk almost fell out of his chair from being woken up so suddenly, but quickly recovered when he saw his friend on the bed looking at him with open eyes. “Lance!” 

Hunk immediately stood up and stumbled towards Lance in a hurry, but Lance flinched away from his touch when Hunk tried to wrap his arms around him.

Pidge’s eyebrows creased in concern. “What happened to you?” she asked softly, as if afraid of hurting Lance even more.

“I--The mist and then the voice, a-and Veronica.” Lance’s voice broke slightly at the mention of her name. Keith vaguely recognized it, but couldn’t quite place it. 

Hunk apparently didn’t recognize the name either, because he asked, “Veronica?”

“M-my sister. O-or I guess she w-was my sister.” Lance looked _broken_ and Keith had never, not once in their shared childhood, seen Lance like this. It made him mad that anyone could make Lance fall apart, and Keith wanted to crush the person who did this. 

“Okay… ,” Pidge said, thinking it over. “What did she do?” 

“Maybe it isn’t the smartest idea to do this now, I mean he just woke up,” Keith prompted. 

“No, no, it’s fine,” Lance said shakily. “She p-pulled me along, said that m-my mother was waiting, and that mamá would be mad if we were late for dinner.” Lance smiled watery for a moment, tears welling up in his eyes. “That was true you know, mamá _would_ always get mad if we weren’t in time for dinner, it was all so realistic.”

Lance took - or tried to at least - a deep breath, and continued. “Then she led me to my mother, mamá h-hugged me and at first i-it felt like paradise, but then, then, I started realizing that something wasn’t _right_.” Lance paused again. “My mother’s hugs didn’t feel like that.” 

Tears started falling over Lance’s face freely now. 

“So I told her that she wasn’t my mother. Her f-face m-morphed. It became twisted. She called my sister, and before I could even register anything that was happening, I was on the f-floor.” 

Lance cried softly, managing to say a few words in between his sobs. “I-S-She gave me the b-bruises.”

Keith felt the overwhelming urge to comfort him, distract him, he’d do anything to stop those tears from falling, but he couldn’t do that. He was a bodyguard, nothing more, he wasn’t allowed to be anything but professional. 

So instead he nudged Hunk, who was standing next to him, with his elbow. He looked at Keith once, nodded, and then softly placed a hand on Lance’s non-bruised shoulder, making small circles with his finger and murmuring kind words, Pidge joined in and tried to distract Lance by talking about the robot, and Keith couldn’t help but feel like he had accomplished his task here. 

So, without anyone noticing, Keith slipped out the door of Lance’s room.


	11. performances and remedies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Bored and getting desperate as hell  
> (Desperate, using, texting, amusing)  
> Cellular not amusing and I hope someone will  
> Message me with some plans that are amusing as well  
> 'Cause I haven’t seen the exit of these walls since before this morning."  
> \- Tyler, The Creator (Boredom)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi peeps, here's another chapter!:) Also I wanna take this moment to thank you all for 200 kudos and almost 2k hits!! What?!!! that's insane to me!:) thank u, truly! Please enjoy this chapter and the many chapter to come!!!  
> Plus this story reached 30.000 words today:,) my baby's growing up!  
> MUuSICCc:  
> Boredom- Tyler, The Creator; Rex Orange County; Anna of the North  
> worldstar money (interlude)- Joji  
> Safe Socks- Jack Stauber

“Are you insane?!” Allura’s eyes were alight with fury and concern. “You went to the fair even though you knew that there was a group of trained _murderers_ on the lookout for you?!”

Lance could only shrug - he could literally only shrug, everything in his body hurt except for his shoulders. “We didn’t know that they would be coming for us, I mean they _did_ say that they were only going to strike after two months, not now.”

The fury in Allura’s eyes doubled. “They said that we had two months to decide whether to give the palace up to Lotor or not, not that they were going to strike after two months. As long as we don’t figure them out, they could be everywhere, strike everywhere, they already managed to defy the castle’s security and enter, they could literally do anything!” Allura sighed. “Listen, Lance, you’re going to have to learn how to be responsible, you are the Prince of Altea, we need to show our people that we are strong and mature. You didn’t just get yourself in danger, you also got Pidge and Hunk in harm’s way.”

Lance huffed, of course she was right, she was always right. He didn’t think that he could live if anything bad happened to Pigde or Hunk, because of him and Allura knew that. 

“I know, I just really wanted those Quick Quiznacks you know?” Lance said, a small smile tracing his lips. 

Allura smiled back at him gently and proceeded to make small comforting circles over his shoulder with her finger. “I know, but fun fairs simply aren’t for us, especially not in these times. I won’t tell mother and father about this,” she said while slowly rising from the chair next to Lance’s bed. “Get better soon brother of mine, may our ancestors support you.”

Lance rolled his eyes. “Yeah yeah, I get it, the ancestors will surely support me, just go and do your holy crown princess duties oh Majesty.”

Allura chuckled and moved to the door elegantly, her dress flowing around her. “I will my dear brother.” she smiled at him one last time and left the room.

Lance heard her footsteps retreat and immediately felt bored again: he had been in this damned bed for two days now, not being able to move anything except from his shoulders. 

“Shiro?!”

A response from the other side of the door came immediately. “Yes?”

“Can you come in?” Lance might as well spend his time being glued to his bed by finding out why he still felt that obvious familiarity around Shiro. 

The door to his room opened in one swift motion. This was the first time that Lance had _seen_ Shiro in two days, he had always heard him shuffle around and exchange words with the people that came to bring Lance food, but he hadn’t _seen_ him.  
Shiro looked good as always: piercing dark eyes, raven black hair and a pale skin, but he also seemed… Lance couldn’t really describe it other than a bit disheveled: his hair was slightly more of a mess than usual, and his eyes looked like a mix of confusion, tiredness and an intensity that didn’t quite fit with the other two emotions. 

“Are you okay?” Shiro asked, his voice raw. 

“Mhm, just _really_ bored. Do you have any interesting I’m-a-badass-guard-in-training stories? You seem the type to have a lot of those.” 

Lance expected Shiro to shift the topic of conversation, but instead he just stared at Lance for a while, and said, “No not really.” in a way that was very unlike the person that Lance got to know over the past couple of days. 

Lance saw an opportunity. “I’m sure you have lots of interesting stories, the question is, are you going to share them willingly or am I going to have to force them out of you?” he said, teasing. Even if Lance wanted to ‘force things out of Shiro’ his own frail arms couldn’t quite compare to Shiro’s, besides Lance was so weak right now, that anyone, even a newborn baby, could probably have beaten him at this point. 

Shiro huffed, probably also realizing this.

“So,” Lance started, looking at Shiro’s arm. “What earned you that scar?” He pointed at one of the various thin lines that were sprawled across Shiro’s skin. It wasn’t bigger than any of the other scars or seemingly more interesting, it was just the one closest to Lance and therefore least painful to point at. 

“A lake monster.”

Lance’s brows shot up to his hairline. “A lake monster? Where?”

A faint look of nostalgia crept up on Shiro’s face. “Yuki. The water planet.”

Lance furrowed his brows. “Your monster can hardly qualify as a _lake_ monster then. Yuki is wholly made up of water, with just a small amount of islands dotted in the endless sea.”

Shiro shrugged. “Yeah I guess.”

Lance huffed. “What did you do to the creature that gave you the scar, though?”

Shiro looked detached, disinterested. “We had to fight it and it scraped one of its fangs across my arm, nothing too big.”

Lance’s eyes lit up with this new tad bit of information. “Oohh who’s ‘we’?”

Shiro glared at Lance. “Me and the rest of the disciples of my squad.”

Lance grinned. “And your girlfriend was also part of this squad I presume?”

Shiro glared at him. “No, I don’t have a girlfriend.”

“I don’t believe you, surely there must be an awful lot of scandals in those cramped training facilities?” Lance wiggled his brows. 

“Not my facility.”

“Pfff, how boring.” Lance paused, thinking of interesting topics. “Back to the lake monster, was it big? What did it look like?”

Shiro seemed to think this over. “Yeah it was pretty big, I mean it filled up a good amount of sea.” His eyes lit up for a second. “and it had this grayish blue colour, with giant fangs, and deep red eyes. Everytime it moved it seemed to sweep a piece of ocean away.”

Lance listened intently. Shiro was actually using adjectives!

Shiro’s eyes were alive now. “We really had the hardest time defeating it, I even fell into the ocean at some point.” Something started to form on his face, something that Lance had never seen before. It twisted Shiro’s features in a way that was incredibly new and familiar at the same time.

The tiniest smile formed on Shiro’s lips.

“When I had fallen into the ocean, the creature tried to shred me into pieces but its fang had barely touched my skin before I was suddenly pulled up.”

“By who?” Lance asked, genuinely interested in the story that was unraveling itself.

Shiro’s eyes dulled over a bit, his guard slowly coming up again. “No one important.” Shiro looked as if he was about to stand up. “You need to rest.”

Lance groaned and rolled his eyes. “No, no, no, I don’t want to rest anymore. I am tired of resting.” He grinned. “Get it? Because I’m supposed to be resting, but I am tired of resting? So like I’m tired of sleeping?”

Shiro huffed, seemingly rather unimpressed. “Yeah, yeah I get it, doesn’t mean it’s funny though.”

“Hey! Aren’t you supposed to be nice to me?”

Shiro shrugged in response. 

Suddenly an idea sprung to Lance’s mind. “Oh! Let’s go visit Pidge! I’m curious about how the robot’s doing!”

Shiro’s eyes widened the tiniest bit. “That’s on the other side of the castle. Can you even stand properly?”

The answer to that was probably no, but Lance wouldn’t be Lance if he wasn’t stubborn enough to go against everyone’s wishes, including those of his own body, maybe especially those of his own body. 

“Yes,” Lance said determinedly. “Observe.” 

He slowly sat up in his bed, every muscle in his body alight with pain, and let his legs drop down to the floor, the infinite cold that the floor radiated touched his bare feet and Lance couldn’t help but flinch. He forced himself to slide off the bed and straightened his knees as best he could. Now he was standing in front of Shiro’s chair, while Shiro glared scrutinizingly at him, his stare burning small holes into Lance’s already sore skin. 

“Lance,” Shiro’s voice was soft, almost tender, but not quite. “I really don’t think that this is a good idea.”

“On the contrary,” Lance said. “It’s a great idea! It’s the best I’ve ever had! Look! I can even walk!”

To demonstrate this Lance wobbled around a bit under Shiro’s skeptical gaze, every muscle in his body screamed for him to stop, but Lance gladly ignored it and kept moving, this time towards his clothing that had been trown on the floor. He pulled them on on top of his thin nightwear, and left for the door.

He could feel Shiro close behind, one arm extended behind his back in case Lance fell.

“I’m fine,” Lance huffed, while stumbling through the serene halls of the palace.  
“Mmhm.” A soft hum was Shiro’s only response, the arm behind Lance’s back not shifting. 

After a long excruciating walk, that had Lance biting back various small moans of pain and Shiro shooting him worried glances more than once, they finally ended up in front of the transparent door that marked the entrance to Pidge’s - or rather Matt’s to be precise- office. 

Lance pressed his thumb on the biometric scanner with his last ounce of strength and entered the space. 

Pidge wasn’t sitting in front of the robot as Lance had expected, instead she was sitting on her knees in front of two small coffee tables. One of the tables had the faintly purple shards of what Lance vaguely recognized as the lantern that the Galra had dropped when teleporting on it, and the other table had the smaller blue lantern on it that Pidge had bought at the fun fair. 

“What are you doing?” 

Pidge turned around with one sharp movement. “Nothing, just checking something.” She stood up. “I was actually just coming over to your room.” She started walking across the room and reached inside one of the many cabinets on the other side. 

“Here,” she said, while walking towards Lance with a small brown bag in her hand. “Hunk gave me this and said that I should give it to you. I presume he collected some healing herbs from the garden.”

“Thanks,” Lance said. “but where’s Hunk?”

She smiled mischievously. “He’s out with Shay.”

A broad smile formed on Lance’s features. “No way! You’re kidding! He actually did it?!”

“Yes way! He actually gathered the courage and asked her to grab a drink with him. She got all flustered, it was really cute.”

“Pfff, our Hunk is really growing up isn’t he?” Lance said while putting a finger up to his eye and pretending to wipe a tear away.

Pidge rolled her eyes and turned towards the robot. “I’m guessing you came for this?” 

Lance shrugged. “Yeah probably, I mean I just wanted something to drive the boredom away.”

“Right well, Reyes’ doing okay. She hasn’t made much progress, though, she can still only twitch her fingers.”

“Reyes? You named the robot Reyes?”

“Yes… and?” Pidge said looking Lance straight in the eye as if she was challenging him. When Lance didn’t rise to the challenge, she continued, “I mean Reyes means royalty, so, I thought it’d be fitting.” 

“Okay whatever, anyways, twitching fingers is a good start right? You’ve already got the right systems in, now you just need to work your tech voodoo and voila, done.” Lance never knew what kind of magic Pidge possessed to get her systems to work, but she always managed it no matter what.

“Ah Pidge, there you are.” Matt came walking in, looking so incredibly similar to Pidge that you could only tell them apart by their height. Pidge didn’t like to admit it but she was a hell of a lot shorter than Matt. “Oh hi Lance, and… ”

“Shiro,” Shiro’s deep voice answered from a corner of the room.

“Hi Shiro, you’re the new bodyguard I presume?”

Shiro nodded stiffly, but didn’t reply in any other form. 

Lance saw how Pidge subtly nodded at him from across the room, signaling for him to leave. Probably to avoid Matt from finding out about the severity of Lance’s wounds.

“Yeah well we’ll leave you to it then, good to see you again Matt.”

“Right back at ya,” Matt said before turning to Pidge and animatedly discussing something with her. 

Lance moved back to the transparent door and managed to get out without showing too much pain. He felt Shiro closeby, probably again holding out a hand behind his back. 

As soon as they were out of the hall, Lance’s legs suddenly decided to collapse and deposit him to the floor and his body would’ve crashed into the cold marble floor if it wasn’t for the two arms holding him up. 

Lance was pulled up before even properly realizing that he had been stopped from crashing into the ground by mere centimeters. Shiro lifted him up gently, careful not to hurt his bruises.  
“We should get you to your room.”

“Mhmm yeah,” Lance mumbled, too focused on the sharp pain shooting through his chest to focus on Shiro’s piercing gaze. 

Lance didn’t even protest when Shiro dragged him through the hall, keeping him up on his feet by his shoulders. 

They entered Lance’s chambers and Shiro softly placed Lance on the bed.

“Can you apply the medicine yourself?” Shiro’s voice was faint, far away.

“Yeah, yeah, I think. Wait… what did you say?” The pain shooting through him was so intense that he couldn’t even hear his own thoughts. 

Until suddenly two cool fingers pressed against his skin. 

“I’m just applying the medicine Pidge gave you.” 

The fingers moved over his skin, leaving behind a trail of herbs that covered his bruises, making the pain fade and transform into a dull ache. 

“That should numb the pain.”

The fingers left his skin, but returned a while later, tracing the same route over Lance’s skin as before, but this time with another substance. 

“And that should quicken the healing process.” 

“How do you know all this?” Lance asked tiredly.

“You pick up on a few things when fighting lake monsters.” Shiro’s voice was vague, almost blurry to Lance’s ears. “Just sleep.”

And that’s what Lance did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! The comments are literally my life fuel so pls lemme know what u thought!:)  
> As always, have an amazing day/night!:))  
> -Amber


	12. pieces and betrayal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Don’t be afraid, There’s nothing strange  
> It’s not a trap"  
> -Cavetown (Poison)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just wanted to give another thanks to all the people supporting this story, it's makes my heart go fuzzy:')  
> Also sorry for the lack of consistency on the uploads lately, it is probably very annoying.  
> Nonetheless enjoy!! (and sorry for the late upload)
> 
> Music:  
> Dog Nightmare -Jack Stauber  
> Solitude Standing -Suzanne Vega  
> Poison -Cavetown

The square where the fun fair had been held was empty and seemed barren without the many children that had been at the fair running around: the only things left on the square were a few small pieces of trash that were still scattered everywhere and a few salesmen tiredly packing up their booths. 

Keith was looking for anything that might be left from the attack on Lance, maneuvering in between the various salesmen who groaned when Keith moved through their neatly placed products. 

When Keith had thoroughly searched the square and questioned the unamused salesmen twice, he slowly started to give up: Lotor and his group had clearly covered their tracks well, seemingly not leaving a single trace of their existence behind. 

Keith wandered off the square and walked along the streets of the capital, thinking that maybe Lotor’s group could have left some traces in other parts of the city. The buildings around him, just like the Royal palace itself, were a mix of modern and ancient, with hints of serene blue and white everywhere. 

The streets weren’t nearly as calm as the buildings were, instead they were filled with people tending to their lives, and even though it was early in the morning, the streets already brimmed with laughter and the positive glory that they were known for. 

There were too many people here to clearly spot any hints of Lotor’s group and Keith couldn’t help but feel like he should give up, as far as he could see there wasn’t anything around here that gave even the tiniest indication that Lotor had been here, and Keith suspected that he wasn’t going to find any. 

That was until he saw someone dressed in black hurriedly weave their way through the crowd. 

Something about the person seemed familiar, and as far as Keith could recall there weren’t a lot of people in Altea wearing black, the shops here barely even sold black clothing. The person could just be a tourist, but for some reason Keith didn’t believe that.

Keith decided to follow them, it couldn’t hurt and if it only turned out to be a tourist no harm would be done. He tailed the person, his Altean uniform making him blend in with the other people dressed in blue and white. He pushed through the crowd almost unnoticed, following the person in black at a distance.

The person seemed to be leaving the busy city center in a hurry and made their way to a neighborhood that didn’t look at all like the bustling center: buildings that once stood in their full glory now were broken down, the roads were cracked, the paths were narrow, not leaving much room for walking, and the faint scent of something bitter tainted the air. Definitely not a neighborhood that a tourist would visit. 

Because of the lack of people Keith was having a harder time to go unnoticed and thus he hid behind the crumbling buildings around him, watching the person move. 

Until now, Keith had only seen the person’s back, but when the person’s face slightly turned in Keith’s direction for a split second, he immediately recognized it. 

A slim nose, skin glowing slightly, hair tucked inside a hood with the tiniest strand of light violet hair still sticking out: this was undeniably a Galra person.

Not just _a_ Galra.

Meira.

But what was she doing here?

Keith could no longer restrain himself and stepped out from behind the wall, this was his friend after all and he didn’t mind making himself known to her.

Meira immediately whipped her head around, eyes wide when she saw him. 

“Meira,” Keith said.

She didn’t break into a smile like he had been expecting her to. “Keith. I see you’ve settled into uniform.” Her tone of voice didn’t hold any emotion.

Keith furrowed his brows: she had never been this cold before, always in for a bit of banter. “So,” he began. “Why are you here? Do you have a mission here too? How are things at the Blade of Marmora?” He usually didn’t ask people this many questions, but this was Meira, he could ask her anything. 

“Yeah I’m on mission,” she said taking a step closer to where Keith was standing. “I don’t really know how things are at the Blade, haven’t been there for a while. I’m sure they’re fine, though.”

Keith hummed, assuming that her absence from the Blade of Marmora had something to do with her mission. “So what’s the mission? Anything interesting?”

Something flashed over her face, but Keith couldn’t quite place it. Something felt off.

“Nothing too exciting,” she said in the same monotonous voice that she had used before. She took a step forward again. 

Keith couldn’t help but grow suspicious, usually their conversations had been nothing like this: they had always been filled with warmth and friendship, now it seemed distant and cold, like old relatives, that didn’t particularly like each other, meeting again. 

“Right,” he said. 

“You know, when I heard what my mission was for the first time, I couldn’t quite believe it,” she continued while smiling an almost cold smile, one that Keith had never seen her wear before. 

Keith involuntarily took a small step back, not quite sure why Meira was acting in such a way, not really wanting to be sure either. 

“You shouldn’t have followed me Keith.” 

His hand was on his blade in the span of a second, but before he could do anything with it, he felt his legs collapse. He looked down and saw one of Meira’s signature bulky daggers sticking out of his left leg, blood surrounded it, coloring his uniform red. 

In a reflex Keith drew out his own blade and stabbed back. Meira also fell to the ground with a bitter laugh.

Apart from the stabbing pain in his leg an entirely different pain jabbed at his heart. 

Betrayal.

The person who he’d seen as a dear friend for over six years, had now, seemingly without reason, stabbed him.

“Why?” he asked, his voice slightly broken with pain. 

She shrugged. “Because of my mission.”

A flash of purple light appeared behind her, and Keith could make out a man standing in the middle of the light extending his hand to Meira. 

“Let’s go,” the man said, his voice slightly husky.

Meira tilted her head lightly, indicating a nod and without looking back took the man’s hand. 

The man lifted his other hand, which held a purple lantern, upward, and smashed it down to the ground. 

The lantern broke into a thousand shatters, sprawled over the dirty pavement, and Meira was gone. 

Blood seeped out of Keith’s wound, but he still reached out to grab one of the lantern pieces, the glass stung his finger and created tiny drops of blood on his fingertip, but Keith couldn’t care less. 

He forced himself to stand, trying to lean as little as possible on his wounded leg, and stuffed the glass shard of the lantern into his uniform pocket.  
Slowly he started dragging himself back to the palace, step by step. The ground was tainted with blood everywhere he went, his steps excruciatingly slow. Once he reached the busy streets again, it wasn’t that much of an issue to move, because people constantly pushed him forward in their own hurry to get somewhere on time. 

He had left Meira’s dagger in the wound, to lessen the blood seeping out, thus making him not bleed empty as fast. 

It was already deep into the afternoon when he reached the main square again, now walking towards the endless road that led back to the palace. He was limping over the paved main road back to the Royal palace, somehow he still remembered where he had to go while the pain was fogging up his mind and senses. 

Someone seemed to call out to him, but it was blurry, unfocused. 

He felt two hand grab him by the shoulders and he almost collapsed into the person who had steadied him.

The hands shook him, making a part of the fog in his mind dissolve, and Keith looked up, right into two deep blue eyes.

He could hear the person now. 

“Shiro!”

It was Lance.

“Hunk come help!”

“Why are you o-outside?” Keith strained to ask. Lance shouldn’t be outside. It was dangerous. 

The eyebrows above the blue eyes creased in worry. “We’re not outside. We’re in the kitchen.”

“Oh.” Keith had never heard his own voice sound this small, but then again, he had never been stabbed in the leg by someone who had formerly been one of his best friends. 

“We need to take him to the doctors!” Heavier than Lance’s voice. Hunk.  
He felt the hands on his shoulders shift, they now placed themselves under his armpit, lifting him up together with the other set of hands that had placed themselves under his other armpit. 

“Okay… three, two, one,” one of the voices said.

Keith felt himself lifted into the air, his leg losing the strain of being balanced on. 

He faintly heard the people around him talking panickedly and Keith wanted to tell them that they didn’t have to worry, that he would be fine. 

He didn’t want Lance to worry.

Keith’s eyesight had left and the infinite darkness around him was trying to envelop him fully, but he was not letting it. Keith needed to stay awake, needed to stay conscious. 

Apparently one of the people near him thought the same thing, because he kept on yelling in his ear. 

“Shiro! Stay awake!”

The sentences were repeated like a mantra, and Keith couldn’t help but force himself to listen to the very recognizable voice. 

Keith was placed on something soft and finally, with the prick of a needle, he had to let himself fade away. 

\---

“Lance! Of course he’s not dead! Stop worrying.”

“Yeah Lance, Pidge has a point, he’ll wake up, don’t worry too much.”

“Yeah but what if he doesn’t?”

The sound of voices was still vague, as if Keith was under water, buried in darkness, but still noticing a sign of life above the surface. He recognized the voices, but couldn’t quite make the connection in his mind.

“He will!”

“Wait… guys look! His eyelashes!”

Keith was slowly breaking through the water’s surface, tired of the endless swimming that he had to do to keep himself from drowning. 

“I told you he would wake up!”

Keith slowly opened his eyes, immediately blinded by the stark white light above him, but quickly adjusting. 

“Welcome back to the world of the living my friend.” Orange hair. A light, playful voice. Pidge. 

“It’s good to have you back.” Heavy voice. Tanned skin. Hunk.

“It took you long enough too, we thought that Lance was going to try and throw a bucket of water over you if you didn’t wake up soon.” 

“I wouldn’t throw a bucket of water over him!” Light voice. Blue eyes. Tanned skin. Lance.

Pidge threw Lance a sceptical glare, only to be ignored by Lance as he turned to Keith. “What happened?”

The events of the day before started rushing back to Keith again, hurrying to create an image of what happened.

“I was looking for traces of the attack on you.” His own voice sounded raspy, as if he hadn’t talked in ages. “I followed someone around town, until I recognized them. It was an old friend of mine. We had a small conversation. I felt that something was slightly off. She stabbed me in the leg. She escaped with a man. To get away, they used the same type of lantern, as the Galra that broke into the palace. The rest you can probably guess.” Keith suddenly remembered something. “Where is my uniform?”

Pidge pointed to the nightstand next to the bed that he was laying on. “Second drawer.”

Keith strained to open the drawer and grabbed around until he found the pocket of his uniform that contained the shard of glass that he had taken from the ground. He held it out to Pidge. “This is one of the shards of the lantern that they left behind. Analyze it if you will.” 

Pidge took the shard from him, looking at it with an inspecting gaze. 

“I think you have to tell the King and Queen,” Hunk said. “I know that it would probably link to the fact that we went to the fair if you tell them, but this is too important not to tell.” Hunk looked remorseful, already preparing for the massive scolding that they were going to get from the King and Queen for going to the fair. 

“Yeah.” Lance frowned. “That’s probably for the best.”

Keith was silent for a while, considering his options. 

“Yes. I will have to tell the King and Queen,” Keith said determinedly. The trio before him glanced at each other bashfully before nodding. “However,” he continued. “I won’t tell them that you went to the fair. I will just say that I went to look around the city and noticed someone that didn’t quite fit in with the rest of the people walking around, thus I became slightly suspicious and followed them.” 

“You would do that?!” Lance perked up. 

Keith didn’t answer, he had told them what he was going to do and now he was going to do it. 

“Thank you,” Hunk said.

“Yeah thanks,” Lance agreed.

Pidge smiled. “We really do appreciate that. Thank you.”

Keith nodded and attempted to stand up from the bed, slowly putting his legs over the edge of the bed and letting them set foot on the marble floor. 

“Could you maybe… ?” Keith started, not quite sure where he was going with the sentence. 

Hunk’s eyes lit up in realisation as he seemed to realize what Keith meant. “Well then, we’ll leave you to it.”

Pidge nodded and followed Hunk out the door. Lance didn’t immediately follow them, instead looking down at Keith’s wounded leg with wide eyes. 

Pidge rolled her eyes from the door and returned to drag Lance away by his arm. “Let’s go.”

“But-,” Lance tried to protest, but Pidge stared him in the eye, warning written all over her face, and Lance wisely cut himself off. Keith couldn’t help but let a small unnoticeable smile trace his lips. He had never in his life expected to see a Prince be commanded around by a techservant. It was a welcome change.

The trio disappeared behind the hospital wing door and left Keith alone to change from his hospital gown into his uniform. 

After he was done changing he asked a servant to ask for an audience with the King and Queen for him. The servant hurriedly left Keith behind in the hospital wing and left for the great hall. 

Not even fifteen minutes later he returned to escort Keith to the great hall with the news that the King and Queen had accepted his request.

\---

Keith explained the story of what happened for the second time that day. 

“Well it must be very shocking for you to recognize this Meira as your old friend and get stabbed in return. As for the state of your uniform we will ask the sewing department to make you a new one,” the Queen said. 

Keith bowed slightly as a sign of thanks. His uniform had a hole the size of Meira’s dagger in it and although this was not one of the most pressing matters by a long shot, the Queen had still taken it into consideration, Keith couldn’t help but find that admirable. 

“Since the same teleportation method was used here as in the palace a few weeks ago, I think we can safely assume that Meira and this man you talked about are in the same group of people as the Galra who attacked the palace,” the king said.

“Yes Your Majesty,” Keith said. “That is indeed what I was thinking.”

The King and Queen looked at each other worryingly.

“So,” The Queen said, her face sad. “we truly need to start preparing for war. After three hundred years of peace, I’m afraid the time has come again for Altea to stand up and defend itself against these intruders.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm really out here leaving our babies with wounds huh? Sorry:'( Anyways as always the comments are my food and generate my will to live (that was a bit much, but we love dramatics here haha) so please leave your thoughts:) I really hope that y'all are enjoying the story as much as I am.  
> Thank you,  
> -Amber


	13. parties and memories

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "You were first to open your mouth  
> But my head has been singin’ the same song  
> I've only known you a moment  
> But it feels like you knew all along."  
> ~James Supercave (Something to Lose)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HEy I've come back from the dead, and again I'm sorry for the inconsistent updates, life's been incredibly busy for me lately and next to that me and a very good friend of mine have been busy developing a plot for a fanfic that we're working on together. (collabs are hard lol). Anyways thank you for being patient and enjoy!  
> Also this is a _juicy_ chapter ;)))) HAVE FUN READING
> 
> MUSIC:  
> Something to Lose- James Supercave  
> Golden- Harry Styles  
> The Deconstruction- Eels

Even though the palace had since the attack on Keith gone into an eerie type of silence, this dissolved as soon as the day of Allura’s birthday party arrived: everyone seemed radiant, smiling with the broadest grin they could muster on their faces. Children ran around playing, causing maids to almost drop the things they were carrying for the event. The halls were filled with guests coming to see the pristine beauty that the Altean palace was known for. 

Keith had never heard so much buzz in the palace, but then again, ever since he arrived people had been stressed, so, perhaps he had just never seen the palace in its regular state. For some reason Keith felt a strange sense of regret, that he’d never seen the _actual_ palace before: the palace that people all over the universe talked about, the palace that was famous for its positivity. 

Next to him Lance was laughing: _really_ laughing. Keith for the life of him couldn’t remember what the joke had been, but he let the sound of Lance’s melodious laughter ring through his mind nonetheless, Keith’s own lips curving upward slightly. 

“There! You did it again! You smiled!” Lance’s voice was happier than Keith had ever heard it before, and Keith couldn’t really tell if that was because the radiant palace had a positive influence on him, or because Keith was actually smiling. 

Keith’s smile immediately disappeared and his expression reverted back to its controlled self. 

“No, you cannot take it back now, you smiled and I was a witness, no matter how much you want to deny it.”

“I don’t want to deny it.”

“Oh no?” Lance asked sceptically.

“No,” Keith answered. 

“What are we talking about?” Pidge’s voice popped up out of nowhere, her orange hair slowly emerging from behind a white pillar as she walked up to them, closely followed by Hunk.

“Shiro just smiled,” Lance answered casually. 

“You smiled?!” Hunk blurted out, turning to Keith.

“Yep, he did. I was there,” Lance answered for him.

Keith just rolled his eyes. 

_Why were they talking about him smiling anyway?_

“Aren’t you incredibly late for Allura’s birthday dinner though?” Pidge asked Lance.

“Nah,” Lance responded, not making any effort to move faster. “the dinner only starts at half past seven.”

Hunk furrowed his brows. “It’s almost quarter to eight.”

Lance’s eyes widened and in a split second he took off, sprinting down the halls as if his life depended on it, Keith tailed him with ease as he made his way through the various already more familiar halls, trying to get to the dining hall as fast as possible.

Once Lance finally arrived at the impressive doors that marked the entrance, flushed and panting, the guards quickly opened them for him, leaving Keith behind. Keith could only catch a glimpse of the surprised guests before the doors shut closed in front of him again, swallowing Lance. 

“So, you excited for the Princess’ party?” A voice next to Keith spoke up. Ollas.

“Should I be?” Keith asked, answering the question with another question.

Ollas huffed. “Not really, you have to watch out a lot more. There are a lot of people and you never know who has ill intentions.”

“Oh,” Keith said, not really bothering to make conversation.

“I mean,” Ollas continued, not noticing Keith’s withdrawal. “Of course you always have to keep your distance, but everyone’s so close to the Princess at all times, you never know who might pull out a knife.”

Keith guessed that was true, even though this was his first mission and therefore definitely his first time being a bodyguard, he knew that you had to value the privacy of the person you were protecting, but at the same time you needed to watch everyone close to them. Especially parties could be an issue.

Ollas had continued talking animatedly about events that happened to him as a bodyguard at parties, and even though he talked about them as if they were terrible fever dreams, Keith could see the faint outline of a smile tracing Ollas’ thin lips.

“This is your first time as a bodyguard I presume?” Ollas suddenly asked.

“Yes,” Keith answered. 

Ollas’ eyes glinted. “Right well, don’t worry I’ll pull you through. Parties suck, but with my help, it’s going to be fine.”

\---

There were two things Keith could be sure of as he was standing in the busy, vibrant ball room of the palace: Ollas was of absolutely _no_ help to Keith, because he suddenly disappeared to talk to a fair skinned girl, and secondly, Ollas was right about this being hard, every time someone extended a hand to Lance, Keith felt the need to check what was in that hand, twisting his body into all sorts of angles just to get a glimpse of who was doing what.

He didn’t like it. 

Not one bit.

From Keith’s spot at the wall, he noticed how a girl in a red dress was slowly stalking up to Lance from behind with her hands extended to his shoulders. Keith immediately jumped upright, ready to attack the moment the girl would inevitably take out a knife. 

Only she didn’t.

She just put her hands onto Lance’s shoulders lightly and made him turn around. Lance beamed at her in a way that Keith had never really seen him do before. She said something to him and he nodded, then, together, they left for the bar. Lance and the girl seemed to be involved an interesting conversation, both nodding excitedly at each other’s words, seemingly not being able to contain their excitement at seeing each other again. 

Keith felt a jab of something raw poking at his heart: he didn’t know _what_ it was or where it came from, he just knew that he didn’t like the way Lance smiled so openly at her, as if he had no secrets to hide from her.

Lance and the girl got their drinks at the bar: two large glasses containing a strange looking blue liquid. They bumped the glasses together in a kind of toast and drank the substance at once, wasting no time sipping. The girl giggled as she wiped away some excess liquid from her chin, and Lance ducked his head in a sour expression, as if he’d just drunk something vile. 

After that one drink it seemed as if the restraints had gone and they kept ordering drinks together: giggling, laughing and talking. At a certain moment though; the girl leaned forward, and whispered something to Lance, just bare inches away from his ear. 

Lance made no move to distance himself from her and instead nodded eagerly.

Keith once again couldn’t help but feel a jab at his heart, frowning he kept watching as the girl took Lance’s hand into hers and led him to the dance floor. The girl and Lance were pushed close together as the people around them moved, leaving almost no space in between the two of them; neither Lance nor the girl seemed to care though as they continued to shake their hips and sway to the sound of the beat. 

Keith kept staring at the two of them, not blinking, as if glaring would change the scene before him. 

“Ah yes.” Ollas’ voice suddenly sounded next to Keith, forcing him out of his trance. “that’s Princess Valen from Foxia. She’s pretty isn’t she?” Ollas sighed. Keith looked at her, she wasn’t ugly, not by a long shot: long lashes, dark shining hair, a dark glowing skin and full red lips. “If it’s true what the servants are saying then the Prince truly is a lucky man.”

“What are they saying?” Keith asked, although he wasn’t really sure if he wanted to know the answer.

“Well, for starters, the only reason Princess Allura invites Princess Valen is because her and Prince Lance get along so well, and the servants often say that Princess Valen and Prince Lance are in a romantic relationship.”

A _romantic relationship_?

For some reason that hurt Keith more than it should have: it wasn’t any of a bodyguard’s business if their person of protection was dating someone, and Keith had been trained in such a way to let any personal feeling behind, not feeling had been the key to success at The Blade of Marmora. Yet, here, he felt more than he had ever felt before, a dozen different emotions running through him, all somehow connected to Lance. 

“You don’t have to look all cold like that Shiro. Romance is a happy thing, you know, it usually gives people a warm expression on their faces.”

Was Ollas purposefully giving Keith a hard time? Keith didn’t know and didn’t particularly care. He simply ignored Ollas and kept looking at Lance and Princess Valen. 

The two were dancing frantically now, letting the alcohol run through their veins, making them forget about boundaries. They giggled and laughed, and even though Keith couldn’t really hear any of what they were saying it almost felt like they were mocking him, laughing at his misery. 

Keith’s stare was so intense that he even noticed the slightest shift in Lance’s appearance, a shift that made clear that Lance was tripping over his own two feet.

People around Lance gasped and jumped to the side as Lance fell to the floor, before he could actually touch the floor, though, Keith had already wrapped his fingers underneath Lance’s armpits, holding him up in such a way that Lance was staring straight into Keith’s eyes and so that Keith’s jet black hair was basically dangling into Lance’s eyes. 

“Hey… ” Lance’s voice was unnaturally soft, hesitant, as he stared into Keith’s eyes with a weird look on his face. “You have purple eyes.” 

Keith’s eyes widened and he wasted no time pulling Lance up to his feet. 

Lance couldn’t find out!

Keith hastily walked back to his former spot against the wall, but it was no use, Lance followed him, leaving Princess Valen behind on the dance floor. She didn’t seem to mind though as she continued dancing. 

Ollas had left again, making it just Lance and Keith leaning against a wall together. Keith kept staring straight ahead, afraid to look at Lance, fearing that it would expose his identity even further.

“I once knew someone with purple eyes, he actually… .” Lance stopped in the middle of his sentence, Keith could see a strange look of realisation forming on Lance’s face, from the corner of his eye. 

Suddenly Lance reached out and grasped Keith’s chin with two warm fingers, turning his face forcibly to Lance. 

Then slowly something happened on Lance’s face: a smile formed. It wasn’t the mischievous smile that he had given Pidge and Hunk countless times before, neither was it the beaming smile that he had given Princess Valen earlier, no, this smile was _so much_ better. The smile seemed as if it was dipped in a childish sort of excitement combined with infinite vulnerability, giving Lance an almost angelic expression.

“It’s you,” Lance eventually said. He didn’t yell or scream Keith’s name, neither did he suddenly start hugging Keith, he just smiled and spoke two words, and that was so much more than enough. 

“It’s me,” Keith answered in a way that left no question of what they were talking about. 

Lance nodded once. “You weren’t going to tell me, were you?”

“No,” Keith answered.

“I’m happy I found out then,” Lance whispered. “Can you smile for me?” 

Keith remembered that he was still drunk and Keith’s lips involuntarily curved upward just the tiniest bit. “Why?”

“Because your smile used to be so pretty.” Lance smiled drunkenly at Keith, and inclined his head towards him. 

“You’ve drunk too much,” Keith said stoically.

“Nope, I’ve drunk exactly the right amount.” Lance looked like he was going to say more, but before he could he was distracted by two hands on his shoulders. “Oh hey Valen, you’re back!”

The princess rolled her eyes. “You were the one who left me.” She looked towards Keith. “And who might this be?”

Lance _pouted_. “Not yours, he’s my bodyguard.”

“Fine, are you coming? The dance floor is waiting,” Princess Valen said, while wiggling her eyebrows. 

Lance seemed to think this over. “No, I think I’m too drunk to dance, I need to be escorted back to my room.” He stared determinedly at Keith, as if waiting for him to move.

“As you wish,” Keith answered.

The Princess of Foxia just shrugged and moved back to the dance floor without Lance. 

Lance smiled and Keith started their walk back to Lance’s room. 

“So you’re you. That’s why you were so familiar.” 

“Yeah I guess,” Keith was exhausted all of the sudden. “But you can’t tell _anyone_ okay? Like absolutely no one. Not a single other person can know.”

“Okay, but can I call you Keith when we’re alone? I like Keith much better than Shiro.” Lance smiled up at him again, grinning lopsidedly. 

Keith couldn’t find the power in him to say no, so he just kept quiet. Lance took this as a yes and his smile grew even wider. 

“We’re here,” Keith said, when they arrived at the big door that marked the entrance to Lance’s chambers.

Lance smiled at him one last time and left him alone in the hallway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SO UM YEAH THEY BOTH KNOW NOW LOL (I use lol way too much). Anyhows I hope you enjoyed! Leave your thoughts in the comments, don't be afraid to leave criticism (as long as it's constructive) :))  
> See you all in the next chapter and I hope you have a great day/night!!  
> -Amber


	14. patience and blue lights

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Staring at a distance, this warmth is hard to find  
> Sitting in the silence, I gave my best; I tried  
> Simply a distraction I didn't hope to find  
> Sitting by my side, I hope you're here to stay"  
> ~No Vacation (Yam Yam)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Geez... I am officially bad at uploading. Sorry, sorry, sorry. It's been a while 👉👈. pls don't fight me.   
> anyways enjoy!!! Before we start I do wanna do a lil check up: did you drink enough water today? are you and your family healthy? are you safely self-quarantaining? I want y'all to be safe and happy!!!!  
> music:  
> Yam Yam- No Vacation  
> The Story- Conan Gray  
> My Antarctica- Duran Duran

Lance woke up with a splitting headache and a stomach that felt queasy at best.

For a while he felt completely empty: no memories, no feelings, no complications, just a headache and the need to vomit.

Then blurry images started forming in his head. At first he couldn’t quite make anything of it: two glowing purple eyes, a mop of dark hair, blue liquid and a dance floor. After some time, though, the images started creating a memory, a memory that surprised Lance and made him feel calm at the same time, a memory that he would never again forget. 

He couldn’t forget. 

Shiro was Keith, _his_ Keith, the Keith that Lance thought that he’d never see again, the Keith that had given him a stone and the memory of being loved after his parents died, the Keith that would only smile and talk to _him_ , the Keith that would hide behind Lance’s back when he was afraid of meeting new people. The Keith that Lance would entrust with his life. 

And ironically enough, in a way, that was exactly what had happened. 

A small smile formed on Lance’s face, making his lips curve upward. 

He needed to talk to Keith. 

Even though every bone in his body hurt, Lance still rose to his feet and put on some clothing that was on the floor next to his bed, he walked the distance to his door and opened it, revealing Keith on the other side, looking at him expectantly. 

“Keith,” Lance whispered, so softly that only Keith would be able to hear. 

Keith’s eyes widened slightly, but he showed no other reaction to his name being said so openly. For Lance, though, it was more than enough. It was the recognition of a name long forgotten. 

“Lance,” Keith eventually replied, in a slightly softer voice than his usual monotonous one. 

“Can you come in and, you know, talk?” Lance couldn’t help but be a bit startled at how his own usually confident voice now sounded somewhat unsure. 

Keith seemed to notice this shift in Lance’s tone of voice, because his gaze became inspecting: it seemed he was trying to see what Lance was worried about. 

“Yes, of course,” Keith tilted his head to the side slightly, as if he was wondering why Lance would even need to ask.

Lance went to sit on the edge of his bed and bit his lip, this was weird- exciting and new- but weird, and he didn’t know what to ask next. 

“Do you remember me?” 

Lance didn’t know why he asked that: of course Keith remembered him, he was _Keith_ he remembered everything, but somehow it was still the most prominent question in Lance’s mind. He needed to have someone who remembered him from before he became what he was now, from before he met Allura, from before he was dressed up in riches. 

“How could I forget?”

And with that all of Lance’s doubts left his mind and even though the pain of the hangover was still apparent in his body, a wide smile broke through on his face, one that he wouldn’t be able to stop even if he wanted it to. 

Lance noticed how Keith’s eyes seemed to linger on Lance’s smile for a while, before returning back to look into his eyes again. 

“What happened to you since you left?” Lance asked.

Keith smiled his tiny smile again, nothing like how he used to smile at Lance: broad and grinning. Nonetheless it made Lance smile back at him. 

“I’m more curious as to what happened to you.” 

Lance understood: he had become a Prince, he went from a lowly orphan to a beloved Prince, and that was unusual to say the least. 

A faint smile of nostalgia traced Lance’s lips as he thought about the story of how he met Allura in the alley. “I met Allura when we left for the city once, she was crying and had lost the way back to the hotel she was staying at with her family. I didn’t know she was the Princess and she didn’t tell me. It was only when we arrived at the hotel that I recognized her father and mother.” Back then Lance had only known them as the King and Queen, now they were so much more, now they were Adriana and Alfor, they were humble and kind, they were the closest thing Lance had to parents. “They invited me to join their parade in the city and later, mostly because of Lura’s input, they invited me to stay at the palace for a week. When it was time for me to return to the orphanage a week later, they told me that Allura had always wanted a brother, and I was the perfect candidate.” Lance shrugged. “That’s the story of how an orphan became a Prince.”

“Do you like it?” 

Lance halted in surprise. No one had ever asked him that before, everyone had always assumed that he liked it, and it was logical to think so, but Keith _knew_ him. “I met some of my best friends here, I wouldn’t trade them for the world.” 

Keith narrowed his eyes slightly. “But do you like it here? Being a Prince?” If Lance still had any doubts about Keith being _Keith_ he wouldn’t have had them any longer, even when Keith had been younger, he had never appreciated people evading his questions. 

“Maybe, I don’t know.” Lance didn’t think he liked being a Prince: everyone talking about him behind his back, everyone having their opinions, people always speculating about his new date, the elegance and pristine purity that was expected of him but that Lance didn’t possess, the responsibilities, the lack of freedom, the everlasting feeling of being worthless, the knowledge that he was a good for nothing orphan that didn’t fit in this world of prestige. He wasn’t going to tell Keith these things, though, he didn't have to know. 

Keith’s eyes narrowed even further. “Are you happy?” 

Lance was fairly sure that he looked slightly panicked at this point. “E-Ehm, I think so?” 

Something seemed to slip over Keith’s features, it was gone before Lance could fully comprehend it, but the flash that Lance had seen was too close to sorrow. 

“It’s your turn now,” Lance said, changing the subject. “What happened to you?”

“The Blade of Marmora happened,” Keith said, his gaze seemingly far away. 

“Yeah, I remember, you were adopted into that group right?”

Keith gave a short nod. 

“So, what happened?”

“A lot of training and eventually the Test.”

“What’s the Test?” Lance asked, tilting his head.

For the first time in their conversation, Keith’s eyes lit up. “It’s something that tests what you’ve learnt and what quality of missions you will be allowed to go on for the rest of your career.”

Lance huffed. “That sounds rather stupid. I mean, what if you evolve as a fighter during your career, but your test results were bad? Do you have to go on lowly missions for the rest of your life, even though you are able to do much more?”

Keith’s eyes widened and he got this strange look in his eyes, as if he was finding something after losing it years before. “I guess, yeah.”

Lance grinned to himself, he had accomplished to make Keith say a sentence with ‘I guess’ in it: that was quite the victory. 

“I bet you had loads of friends there,” Lance said, poking Keith in the side with his elbow playfully.

Something in Keith’s stare changed, his gaze turned darker and his eyes were suddenly shrouded in shadows. “I didn’t, well I had one.”

Lance inched closer, a strange feeling had wrapped itself around his heart, he couldn’t quite place it, the only thing he knew was that he wanted to get rid of it. “What were they like? Were they as good of a friend as I was?”

“She was tough, a really good fighter too, she was always kind to me, and I was always kind to her in return.”

She?

The feeling that had wrapped itself around Lance’s heart seemed to get worse by the second. “Was she your girlfriend?” Lance asked it softly, not at all in his usual confident manner. 

“No.”

That seemed to relieve the pressure of the feeling a bit. “Just a friend then? Was I better at being your friend though?” 

Keith’s stare changed into a glare. “Sure.” 

Lance hadn’t expected Keith to actually answer that, but Lance was abnormally happy that he did. A broad grin formed on Lance’s face pushing the feeling, that had been previously eating away at his heart, back fully. 

Keith’s lips lifted upwards the tiniest bit creating the smallest smile, that immediately dissolved as soon as Lance glanced at his lips. 

Lance smiled back at Keith, as a memory formed in his mind. “I told you that your smile is pretty.”

Keith looked down in an almost embarrassed manner, making Lance’s grin even broader. 

“As weird as it sounds,” Lance started. “I do miss the orphanage sometimes, times were simpler back then, and even though I met amazing people here, I still sometimes miss the forest, the caretakers, hell even that somber old building. I know I’m very _very_ privileged to have ended up as I did, but I don’t know.” he let out a short laugh. “Actually I used to wonder a lot about how you were doing, and look at you now! A solidified member of the one and only Blade of Marmora!”

Keith hummed in agreement. “As somber as that place was, it could actually be fun sometimes.” he looked at Lance as if trying to convey something meaningful, but Lance couldn’t quite seem to grasp it. 

“Yeah,” he answered, smiling softly, memories of the orphanage flooding his mind.

“Remember that one time we discovered that gap in the floor, and it led to that creepy dark hall with that room at the end?” Lance asked.

The soft look of nostalgia crept up on Keith’s face. “Yes?”

“To think that that was just an administration room.” Lance snickered at the thought of how scared they’d been. 

The look in Keith’s eyes also grew softer, more tender as he looked into Lance’s eyes. 

They were as if in a trance, staring at one another while memories were rushing back to them.

Lance, however, broke the content silence. “By the way, I’ve been meaning to ask you: Could you train me, like, I don’t need to be as good at fighting as you are, I just want to know the basics.” He hated that he wasn’t strong enough to even slightly defend himself, he hated that practically anyone could beat him in battle, even though his wounds had long healed. 

Keith arched one of his brows. “Sure, where are the training halls here?”

Lance’s eyes widened. “You want to go now?”

Keith shrugged and stood up, walking towards the door.

“Stop! Where are you going? I have a hangover, I won’t be any good right now!”

Keith turned around slightly. “Yes…so?”

“Okay okay, I’ll point the way,” Lance said as he irritatedly stood up and followed Keith.

As they’d done in the weeks prior, they made their way through the various wide halls and narrow corridors in the palace, but this time it was different: it was no longer Shiro and Lance, instead it was something so much better, so much more personal, it was _Keith_ and Lance.

Lance smiled to himself as he realised this, blindly finding his way through the palace, waving happily at servants, who in return, blushed. After he’d done this for the fifth time he turned around and saw that Keith looked the slightest bit unhappy, in an attempt to cheer him up Lance smiled his broadest grin at him, and it seemed to work, or at least a bit, because some of the shadows cleared off Keith’s face, softening his features.

Lance proceeded to walk through the halls until he reached a large white door, after he put his finger on the biometric scanner the door shifted open, revealing a blue lit hall covered in light gray shades. 

“Huh, haven’t been here yet, it actually looks rather pretty on the inside.” 

Keith looked at him from the corner of his eye, with a slightly irritated look on his face.   
“Sharp shooting and hand to hand combat,” Keith suddenly said.

“What?” 

“Sharp shooting fits you best and hand to hand combat is what you definitely need to practise when you want to defend yourself.”

“Right,” Lance said. 

Keith walked over to a random place on the wall and tapped on it, a subtle look of satisfaction washed over his features when a drawer unlocked and slid outward. Keith took a blue bayard out of the drawer. 

“How did you know that was there?” Lance asked, confused. He didn’t even know that was there, so he certainly didn’t expect a guard from the Blade of Marmora to know. 

“These training spaces all work the same, you start to notice things after a while.”

Keith put the bayard to the side. 

Before Lance could blink, Keith had already extended his fist towards Lance’s face, stopping right in front of Lance’s nose. “Rule number one: never let an enemy out of your sight.”

Lance caught a flash of something on his right and smiled triumphantly when his hand wrapped around Keith’s other fist, that had been flying towards Lance’s side. 

“Good,” Keith said. 

Lance looked at Keith’s eyes and smiled at the compliment. 

Suddenly Lance felt the impact of Keith’s hand against his other side, almost making him collapse. “Rule number two: never get distracted.” 

Lance tried to twist out of Keith’s reach, but one of Keith’s legs suddenly swung upwards, right into the cavity behind Lance’s knee, making him trip and fall onto the ground. 

Something flashed over Keith’s face, but as always disappeared right before Lance could place it. 

“Again,” Keith simply said. 

Lance rose to his feet, grunting, but ready for Keith’s next attack. 

Keith managed to force Lance down to the ground time and time again all the way until the dinner bell rang, making it clear that evening had started to set in. 

“Next time we practise sharp shooting,” Keith said while putting the bayard back into the secret drawer. 

“Why did you take it out if you weren’t going to use it?” Lance questioned. 

Lance found the slight traces of a smile on Keith’s face as he turned around. “I needed to surprise you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I saw a lot of people in the comments of my last chapter being scared that Lance would forget, but....SURPRISE!! I didn't do that to y'all! I feel like Lance finding out was long overdue and personally I hate it with a PASSION when characters in stories drunkenly forget things, so, I decided to not do that to you guys;)  
> Lemme know what you thought!! I love to read yalls comments!  
> -Amber


	15. particularities and teleportation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "The reconstruction will begin  
> Only when there's nothing left  
> But little pieces on the floor  
> They're made of what I was  
> Before I had to break it down"  
> ~Eels (The Deconstruction)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey welcome back ! I tried to upload within a more normal timeframe of one and a half week now, so a bit earlier than my late ass normally does, I hope you like it, a lot goes down in this chapter ;) Also this story has reached 40k words ;') AHHH  
> Anyhows... ENJOY
> 
> music:  
> The Deconstruction- Eels  
> Wandering Star- Portishead  
> Pressure- Muse

Keith felt something for Lance. 

He couldn’t exactly pinpoint what his feelings involved, but he _did_ know that there was something there that he didn’t feel before. 

Every time he saw Lance smile it sparked something, every time he read a story in the little red book that he took from the library he couldn’t help but think about how Lance would react, every time he saw Lance with a girl he felt something deep inside recoil and crumple up. 

He had never once in his life felt this way before, since he had been introduced to the Blade of Marmora he hadn’t felt much in the first place, that’s why it was so incredibly bizarre to suddenly feel so much for one person. It just didn’t make sense: Why Lance of all people? Was it because he was his bodyguard? He didn’t know what the feeling was supposed to be and neither did he know if he enjoyed it.

He wondered briefly if Lance was feeling the same, but immediately pushed that question aside with the thought of why he was even asking himself this. It didn’t really matter, did it? He had to be an emotionless practical person for this bodyguard mission to work: feelings weren’t meant to matter. 

Keith was training Lance in the Altean training hall. Lance had been practising for an entire week now and Keith had been right in guessing that Lance would be good at sharpshooting. Lance’s stealth and precision were somehow exactly right for sharpshooting, making him hit the target almost every time they trained. 

Currently they were in the throws of a mixed battle with one of the simulations that the training pods provided: mixing both hand to hand combat and sharpshooting. The simulation was on ‘easy mode’, but Keith was not surprised to see that the Altean training system was exponentially more difficult than a lot of other training simulations: meaning that ‘easy mode’ for Altean standards was a lot harder than most simulations. 

Lance was holding up surprisingly well: shooting most of the targets with the bayard, but nonetheless practising a bit of hand to hand combat whenever it was absolutely necessary. For Keith this was more than easy, fending off his opponents with a few well placed swoops. He never let Lance out of his sight: keeping track of him and the moves that he decided to make. 

Lance had surprisingly fluid movements for someone who’d never trained before this week and it was obvious that he possessed natural speed and stealth, it was rather impressing really. Small beads of sweat were forming on Lance’s forehead as he was entangled in battle with one of the soldiers in the simulation and for some unknown reason Keith was staring. 

Keith couldn’t quite comprehend why exactly he was staring, and was only pulled out of his trance when he suddenly heard a voice yell at them from the other side of the room, making the simulation crumble apart. 

“Guys! You have to come to my office! Now!”

It was Pidge. 

Her voice sounded rushed, crazed, clearly conveying a sense of extreme urgency.  
Keith and Lance both turned their heads towards her in one swift movement, shot a glance at each other, nodded in mutual understanding and ran through the door with her. 

Sprinting through the halls they ran through various strange passages and corridors, eventually ending up in front of Pidge’s office. 

“Lura and Hunk are inside already,” Pidge said while panting heavily and pressing her thumb against the biometric scanner that would open the door. 

Allura and Hunk were indeed already present and both looked equally as confused as Keith felt.

As Keith shot one look at the office apart from the people in it he immediately noticed how much of a mess it was: there were papers with scribbles on them everywhere, the super robot that had been dubbed ‘Reyes’ had been pushed into a corner, there was a glass shard neatly placed in the middle of the floor with the papers spread around it in a manner that seemed completely random at first glance but at closer inspection had some sort of pattern in it that Keith couldn’t recognize. Everyone in the room was pressed against the wall closest to the door because there literally was no other space to stand. 

“Well they’re here,” Allura said and Keith couldn’t help but be surprised that Allura had said ‘they’ alluding to both him and Lance not just Lance. “Can you tell us what’s going on?” Allura asked. 

“I have discovered something, something big.” Pidge looked frenzied as she was speaking, her hair ruffled and her clothes crumpled, as if she had slept in them. “Come look!” She carefully stepped over the papers and shard on the floor in a complicated routine that looked more like a complex dance than anything else. 

Lance and Keith shared a meaningful glance that meant something like: _How in the world are we meant to get there exactly?_

But eventually it didn’t really matter because Pidge just rolled her eyes and started explaining anyway. “Lance, Hunk, Allura, remember when we witnessed the attack on the palace and the Galra teleported away by means of breaking that lantern and leaving these shards behind?” Pidge pointed at the shard on the floor while speaking. 

Allura, Lance and Hunk shared a look and nodded, indicating that they understood what she meant. 

“Okay good, now Hunk and Lance, do you remember that blue lantern I bought at the fair?”

Hunk and Lance shared a bashful glance probably remembering what had happened later that night, but nodded nonetheless. 

“Yeah,” Lance said, frowning in thought. “That was a bit strange come to think of it.”

“Right,” Pidge said. “Well, I researched the shard of glass that was left from Lotor attacking the palace and found some strange foreign pattern. Later I saw the lantern at the fair and immediately bought it, seeing that it looked somewhat like the Galran lantern. When I researched it, I turned out to be right: the pattern was also present in the ‘code’ of the glass in the blue lantern. It took me ages and a _lot_ of research, books, and databases to find out what it all meant, but eventually I discovered an ancient Greek like numbering system that seemed to originate from Earth, but was slightly different from the official ancient Greek numbering, that closely resembled some of the symbols used in the pattern. It was actually really impressively made and incredibly complex, the numbering also seemed to take inspiration from the Galran numbering system but not fully, making it--”

“Pidge, can you get to the point please?” Lance asked, not unfriendly, just not quite understanding yet. 

“In short: the symbols in the pattern are coordinates.” 

The eyes of everyone in the room widened, immediately understanding why Pidge had seemed so crazed. 

“And we have a whole lantern meaning… ,” Hunk started.

“That we can send Altean troops to the Galran base, without them suspecting. Presuming, of course, that the lantern leads to the base that is,” Allura finished. 

“Yeah well, I don’t know if there are any rules for this type of teleporting: like for instance if there’s a maximum amount of people that can teleport together, so it would be safer to just send the troops to the place that the coordinates reveal.” Pidge reached down to the floor and grabbed one of the papers with her messy handwriting on it. “These are the coordinates I managed to decode.” 

Lance’s eyes suddenly lit up. “And Shiro, didn’t you say that you were attacked by one of the Galra that was also escorted away by this same type of lantern?”

“Yes?” Keith answered. 

“Maybe that meant that the lantern that we have here was actually the device that was meant for that Galra to get back to their headquarters, but maybe because a salesman found it, decided to put it on sale and coincidentally sold it to us, that person couldn’t get a ride home after they attacked me, thus they had to wait until one of their team members could come to pick them up.”

Lance’s theory made sense, it was actually quite explanatory of why Meira had been there one day after the attack, and why she had hurriedly made her way for one particular street in that one particular neighbourhood: it was a meeting point. 

Shit, even if Keith still wanted to deny that Meira was a part of Lotor’s group, there was absolutely no way he could anymore, the evidence was stacking up against her and everything started coming together slowly. 

“Huh,” Pidge said. “That’s actually pretty observant of you Lance.”

Lance grinned proudly at her in response, but the grin immediately disappeared as he realised something. “Why do you sound so surprised?!” 

Before Pidge could do anything else apart from innocently smiling at Lance, Allura started talking again. “How we found the lantern doesn’t matter, it does however matter that we now know where Lotor resides, we can send troops there. I need to tell mother and father of your discovery!”

Pidge hummed and handed the coordinates over to Allura, not noticing that all the while they had been talking, Hunk had been moving closer and closer to the blue lantern. 

It was only when he picked up the lantern that everyone else in the room noticed. 

“Hunk,” Pidge said warningly. “be careful with that if it breaks you will probably be transported to the Galran headquarters on your own, without reinforcements.”

“Yeah yeah,” Hunk said while taking a closer look at it, the lantern dangling from his fingertips. “Wouldn’t it be cool if we could teleport there, though? Like imagine how that would feel!” Hunk took a thoughtful pause while the rest of them carefully moved closer to Hunk, ready to take the lantern away from him. “Would it make like a ‘Whoosh’ sound? Or more like a ‘Swoosh’ sound?” Hunk’s arms, including the one holding the lantern swung around dangerously while making both the ’Whoosh’ and ‘Swoosh’ sounds with his lips. Deep in thought Hunk didn’t notice how the lantern slid further and further out of his grip. “Or would it make more of a ‘Fwoosh’ sound?” Hunk swung his arm around again.

And the lantern fell to the ground.

Pidge leaned forward trying to catch the lantern but ended up taking a hold of Hunk’s shirt in order to stop herself from falling to the floor, Lance immediately grabbed onto Hunk and Keith in response harshly took Lance by the shoulder. 

The last thing Keith saw before the infinite purple set in was glass shattered on the ground. 

\---

A very cold floor. 

That was the first thing Keith saw when he woke up. 

Next he spotted Lance, Pidge and Hunk all sprawled on the ground. 

“What happened?” Lance asked as he slowly woke up and rubbed his head. 

Before Keith could answer, though, Pidge woke up, a whole lot less groggy than Lance, but a whole lot more panicked. “Shit! Shit! Shit! Hunk you better wake up _now_ or I _will_ yell at your passed out body!”

“What?” Hunk mumbled. 

“What? What?! We’re stuck in evil Galra headquarters, because you felt the need to drop the one teleportation lantern we had to the floor!” 

Keith heard the faint rush of footsteps and immediately sushed the both of them before Hunk could reply. “Keep your voices down.”

As Keith looked around he saw that they were in a small cabin with black walls and purple lighting details: there was a bed inside, a small desk and a narrow closet: it reminded Keith of the dorms at the Blade of Marmora. 

“We’re in someone’s private chambers,” Keith stated, and he also had an inkling of whose room this was: if this really had been Meira’s actual way of getting back here, this had to be her place. 

It looked strikingly similar to the Blade of Marmora’s chambers: with the purple lighting lining the ceiling and the black interior.

The footsteps that Keith had heard earlier passed the cabin as Pidge, Lance, Hunk and Keith were scooped up inside, the air filled with tension.

“Okay,” Lance whispered. “We need to get back to Altea and fast.”

“Yeah,” Pidge whispered back. “But how? Even if we find an exit to wherever we are, we don’t know what our surroundings are: it might be a planet or just the open void of space.”

“We need to find one of those lanterns or at least another way of transportation,” Keith said. “When a guy showed up to save the Galra who attacked me in the alley he didn’t arrive by means of a vessel, instead he came by teleportation.”

“Right,” Pidge said, more rushed this time. “But where do we find that here?”

Keith shrugged. “We’re going to have to look, it’s the only way.” He slowly walked to the narrow closet and hoped that it was filled with the same sort of clothing as the closets at the Blade of Marmora. 

Luckily for him, it was.

His lips upturned a bit as he took black, purple lined uniforms out. Keith pulled the fabric of the uniforms a bit, testing the flexibility: they were stretchy. 

Good.

“Take this,” Keith said as he handed the smallest uniforms to Pidge. He grabbed a bigger one for himself, a medium sized one for Lance and since those were all the uniforms there were he also grabbed a large dark gray coat for Hunk, paired with a hood. 

Everyone took off their upper layer of clothing leaving only their undergarments and quickly changed into their ‘new’ Galran suits. The suit was a bit too tight on Keith, since originally it had been made for a slimmer woman, but it didn’t matter: the material was still flexible enough to stop it from ripping. 

“Okay,” Keith said. “We’re going to have to hide our faces as much as possible, but if someone _does_ talk to us I’m going to be the one to do the talking.” As he was saying this Keith kept his glare pinned on Lance, making it clear who he was talking to. 

Keith propped all of their old uniforms into the closet and closed it.

Then he carefully made his way to the door of the cabin. 

“Get behind me,” Keith said as he opened to door to a slit. 

The hallway was lit with the same neon purple lighting as the cabin and it reminded Keith too much of the Blade of Marmora, even though it was clearly not the same place. The hall in front of them was empty. 

“Okay, follow me.” 

Keith made his footsteps light and heard behind him that the others were trying their hardest to copy him. Keith made sure not to walk in too slow of a pace, instead he walked at a normal speed but kept all the senses in his body alert. 

There was the faint sound of footsteps in the distance and as Keith looked he could see some men he didn’t recognize approach them. Keith could feel the others behind him tense, but they kept walking at his pace nonetheless. 

As the men in the distance came closer, Keith could see how they were talking amongst each other and how occasionally someone in the group would smile or laugh. Relief flooded Keith’s body: the men weren’t on a mission, they weren’t looking for them.

Keith kept walking and even though he knew the men weren’t out for them, he still couldn’t help but feel happy as they passed them without batting an eye. 

They kept walking through the halls as Keith chose the broadest paths every time, knowing that wherever the transport room was located, it probably was an important room and thus it would be situated in one of the main parts of the base. 

Currently they were walking in a broad hall with countless of side corridors.

Until…

Keith spotted a figure in the distance. He had seen this person before, he had seen the way she moved countless times, the way her hair was always tied up in a purple ponytail swinging above her shoulders as she walked. She couldn’t see him. She would know.

“Quick,” he hissed. “Take cover in one of the corridors.”

Keith took a sharp left and Lance immediately followed him, however, he didn’t see that Hunk and Pidge had taken a sharp right into a corridor on the opposite side.

“Shit,” Lance hissed when he also noticed how his friends were on the other side of the hall. Both him and Keith hid behind the dark wall of the corridor, signaling to Pidge and Hunk to do the same thing on their side.

All Keith and Lance could do was hope that Meira wouldn’t notice how Pidge and Hunk weren’t Galra in the slightest. 

Meira walked the halls like she always did: upright, alert, her eyes always looking around, nothing like the men who had just passed but the exact way that everyone at the Blade had walked. It evoked memories in Keith that were now tainted by the stench of betrayal. He hated it.

As Meira reached the crossing of where Hunk and Pidge were standing, she did the worst thing that she could’ve possibly done in this situation. 

She took a left into the corridor.

Hunk and Pidge immediately straightened and so did Lance behind Keith. Even Keith who lived under the strict policy of never showing how you felt couldn’t help but sweat from the tension; small beads of sweat forming on his forehead. 

Then Meira did something even worse.

She talked to Pidge and Hunk. 

“Why are you two standing here?” she asked suspiciously. “And why are you wearing one of the outdoors capes?” She was obviously addressing Hunk now.

“Ehm... ,” Hunk said with his face pointed towards the floor. “It was cold?” Even though Hunk whispered, his voice still echoed through the halls reaching Keith and Lance with ease. 

“It was cold? And look at me when talking to me.”

Keith had known Meira for years, he knew exactly what she was going to do next, and it wasn’t good. 

“Sorry,” Hunk said his face still tilted downward.

“What did I say? Look at me!” 

Keith could see how Hunk and Pidge were shaking now, trembling at the sound of Meira’s voice. Keith had seen her get mad before, and admittedly it _was_ scary, even though, she had never once before, gotten mad at _him_. 

When Pidge and Hunk were still refusing to look up, not wanting to risk her seeing how they were about the furthest thing from Galra, Keith could see how Meira’s eyes lit up: she had never been the best at hiding emotions like anger. 

She lifted two fingers, each from a separate hand and placed them underneath the trembling chins of Pidge and Hunk, then, she lifted her fingers again, making both Hunk’s and Pidge’s very Altean eyes look straight at her. 

Shit. 

Keith saw how her eyes went from an angry glint to a surprised wide. She immediately removed her fingers from underneath their chins and grabbed both of them by the shoulder, while talking into something at her shoulder - presumably an intercom - “Intruders. Backup requested.”

Lance immediately lurched out from behind Keith, but Keith grabbed hold of him, whirled him around and put a finger on his lips, shutting him up. Now close to Keith and tight in his grasp, Lance wouldn’t be able to move. The halls would be flooded with guards in a split second: if they saw Lance there would be absolutely no hope for him. 

Keith prediction turned out to be right, because immediately after he had grabbed Lance a dozen or so guards came in, dragging both Pidge and Hunk away. And there was nothing Keith or Lance could do to stop it. 

Shit, shit, shit. 

Only after the group of guards and the cook and technician from the Altean palace had disappeared did Keith look down at Lance. Lance’s face looked slightly flushed, their faces were close and Keith’s finger was still lingering on Lance’s lips. Keith shifted his eyes to Lance’s red lips as a strange desire rushed through him. The strength of the feeling surprised Keith so much that he froze in place, his finger _still_ resting on Lance’s lips.

Until Keith came to his senses again, years of training to deject himself from his feeling reared their ugly heads, breaking Keith out of this trance. 

Keith moved away and let Lance go. 

Then he looked back at the hall where Pidge and Hunk had disappeared. “We have to go get them.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank u for reading !!!!! Hope u enjoyed and I hope that ur doing well in these strange times, if you feel the need to talk/vent ur feelings don't be afraid to hit me up in the comments ! :)))  
> Please leave a comment about how u liked this chapter !  
> Love you all, be safe and have a great day/night!  
> -Amber


	16. past lives and black bars

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Stop, drop and drag me into place  
> Lock the fire escapes  
> I'll break your pretty face  
> Yeah, yeah"  
> ~I DON'T KNOW HOW BUT THEY FOUND ME (Choke)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi I just wanted to give an explanation for as to why I was gone for a month (I know this doesn't excuse anything but yeah): I was experiencing severe writer's insecurity: every time I wrote something down I just hated every word and immediately deleted it once I wrote it, that's why it took me so long to write. In the end I just wrote whatever and rolled with it, I tried to accept that I wouldn't reach perfection and that it shouldn't come in the way of my motivation to write at all. So, yes, this chapter probably sucks, but I truly _did_ try. I'm sorry.  
> Thank you for keeping up with my bs and welcome back:)

Without warning Keith had started running back to the door they had come from and Lance saw no other option but to follow him. There was no way that he was going to stay in the corridor on his own, he’ll be damned if he would have to die alone at such a young age. No, if he was going to die he was going to do so with Keith. 

Keith’s footsteps were soft, barely touching the floor, even though he was running faster than Lance had _ever_ seen anyone run before. Lance tried to copy Keith as best as he could as he followed him, Lance’s out of breath brain couldn’t help but notice how the purple light reflected eerily on Keith’s jet black hair: it seemed almost ethereal, like a fleeting shadow retreating into a black purplish sea. Lance followed the shadow gladly, it reminded him almost of how they’d run through the dark hall beneath the orphanage, the memory creeping to the forefront of his mind

Why was Lance thinking about this while running through an enemy base? He would never understand that. 

“Here,” Keith hissed in front of him as he came to a halt before a black door. “It was this one.” 

“Well,” Lance said, as he looked around the strangely vacant hall. “We can’t just stand here, can we?” 

Keith scanned the space and eventually pointed to another junction with a narrow corridor, that presumably led somewhere else in the dark building. “There,” he whispered. 

They hid behind the wall of the corridor, seemingly waiting for something. Lance didn’t fully understand _what_ exactly they were waiting for and when he voiced this to Keith, he shot him a sharp look. 

“We’re waiting for Meira, the girl who captured them,” Keith said, his tone determined. 

Lance didn’t need Keith to explain who ‘them’ were; _that_ was fairly obvious. “Meira? You know her?” Something seemed to stab around in Lance’s chest and again he couldn’t quite place it. It was a harsh feeling trying to eat him alive, and he didn’t enjoy it, not in the slightest. 

Keith looked at him strangely, his eyes pinched closed slightly. He looked older, more tired. “Yes, she’s the friend who… isn’t a friend anymore.”

" _She_ is the friend that betrayed you?!" The venom in Lance's voice surprised even himself. Maybe he was so mad because she took Pidge and Hunk? No, for some reason that didn't seem quite right: Pidge and Hunk didn't _feel_ connected to this feeling at all, instead the feeling involved just himself, Keith and this Meira girl. The thought of her made Lance's stomach churn, because of her old relation to _Keith_ , not because of his friends being found out by her. Lance felt a wave of embarrassment wash over him: shouldn't he be worried about his friends, who were captured by the enemy, instead of who Keith befriended, broke relations with, or even loved? It shouldn't be his business, Lance shouldn't care and yet, he found that he did, he cared a whole lot. 

Keith rubbed the back of his neck . "Yes, yes she is." His gaze was downcast for a second and Lance was reminded of the boy that Keith had been in the orphanage, gaze all sad. 

"Oh, right." Lance felt sadness flood him, it pushed the prior feeling away but left an almost worse emotion lingering behind. He, again, didn't know why he was sad, he just was, and yet again it had something to do with Keith. "Well," he eventually continued, plastering one of his signature fake bright smiles on his face. "why are we waiting for her then?"

Keith looked at him through narrow eyes, as if inspecting him, looking straight into his soul. "She knows where Pidge and Hunk might be, we have no other way to get to them." 

Lance nodded, aware and understanding of why Keith had made this decision, it still left a bitter taste in Lance's mouth though, and he couldn't help but scowl a bit. 

Keith seemed to take notice of his sour expression but just as he opened his mouth, presumably, to speak, the faint sound of footsteps echoed through the hall.

"Meira," Keith hissed and it stung Lance that Keith could recognize her by the mere sound of her feet hitting the floor. 

A deep seemingly male voice sounded and the footsteps came to a sudden halt, making Keith and Lance shoot each other a curious but confused look. " _You_ should be the one to keep watch of them, I have other things to do," the voice said. 

"What if I don't want to?" Lance remembered the voice from when she had taken Pidge and Hunk and by the faint look of recognition on Keith's face, this was definitely Meira talking. Her voice was low and raspy: beautiful but dangerous, too much like Keith himself. 

The male voice sounded irritated when he answered. "Then you ask someone else to do it, but you _know_ it would earn you major points with Lotor?"

_Lotor_

Memories of the funfair suddenly flashed through Lance's mind: the pain, his family destroying him, _Keith_ destroying him, all because of _Lotor_. Anger and pain set Lance's bones alight, it had hurt and now he would make Lotor hurt. 

"Lance." The whisper was soft, barely a breath. Lance turned in the direction of the sound, it was Keith.

Of course it was Keith. 

Keith looked at him with concern and worry written all over his face, something must have been _very_ wrong with Lance's expression to make Keith look at him like that. 

Lance shook his head, trying to convince Keith that he was okay while simultaneously trying to shake the expression off his face.

"Yes, that much is true." Meira's voice rang through the hall again. "Fine I will do it."

The male voice just gave a hum in response as his heavier footsteps faded away into the distance. Meira seemingly hadn't moved from her spot yet and Keith and Lance shot each other another glance at this, both wondering why she was still standing still. 

She paused for one more second before her footsteps echoed through the hall again. Lance spotted Keith nodding in the direction of her retreating footsteps from the corner of his eye, indicating that they should follow her. Lance nodded back in silent agreement. 

Then without further warning Keith started stalking through the hall, remaining at a safe distance from Meira while still being able to watch her every move. Lance followed Keith without hesitation: Keith knew what he was doing, he always did. 

They walked like this for various minutes, and it was almost too prominent how empty the halls were, the neon purple light harshly beating down on their faces while the three of them barely ran into anyone. Every door that they came across was closed, every corridor deserted, it was eerie to say the least and Lance felt shivers trickling down his spine.

Suddenly Meira came to a slight halt before taking a sharp right into a nearby corridor. She turned various corners taking rights and lefts until she finally entered one of the closed doors 

Keith and Lance seamlessly slipped in behind her hiding in the shadows of the still dark place.  
Slowly they could see her light a torch on the wall, as soon as the torch was lit thousands of screams came to life. The torch shed light on a purple hall with black barred prison cells crammed tightly together. People inside the cells were yelling and shaking the bars, clearly desperate to get out.

Lance glanced at Keith with a look of utter disgust, the people that were imprisoned in Altea lived like royalty compared to this. Keith's eyes mirrored Lance's disgust before he regained his composure, forcing himself back to a neutral state. 

Meira before them stood still on high alert before walking forward, ignoring the shouting prisoners. Lance and Keith stalked her again, getting curious looks from the people watching in their cells, none of the prisoners alerted Meira on them being there though, the yelling continued as it previously had and apart from their interested gazes none of them seemed to care enough to let Meira know of Keith's and Lance's presence. 

Meira came to a stop before a certain cell, and grabbed a tiny shimmering object from the belt around her hips. 

It was a key.

It was the key to the cell she was in front of.

And as Lance looked closer he could see the glint of Pidge's red hair and the dark tint of Hunk's skin.

It was the key to Hunk's and Pidge's cell.

Keith realized this as well because he started creeping up on her from behind. Meira seemed to sense something was wrong because her head gave a twitch, before she could do more than twitch, however, Keith had already wrapped his hands around her throat, hugging her from the back.

Even though Meira was held in a chokehold her chuckle still bounced off the walls. "Oh it's you, I must say I expected you sooner." Her voice was choked but not for longer than a second as she grabbed Keith's hands and pulled them forward, dragging Keith's whole body up her back, forcing him to let go.

Keith cursed and Meira chuckled again. "Go on then, get the key, I've always been better at hand to hand combat Keithy."

Keith's fist flew to her face but she dodged it with ease by simply leaning backward a bit, then she grabbed his fist and twisted. Keith groaned and launched his other fist upward but instead of hitting her in the face he struck the soft hole in her elbow: as a result her arm bent and she was forced to let go of his fist. 

Meira narrowed her eyes and lashed out as Keith lifted his foot, hitting her right in the stomach, Meira stumbled backward, but reacted fast, her hand going for Keith's throat. Soon Lance couldn't keep track of their movements anymore, they were entwined in battle, their bodies moving together in almost perfect harmony while fighting. It was unsettling to witness.

Suddenly, though, Meira reached out for something on her belt, metal shimmering in the neon light.

"Keith! She has a knife!" 

Keith immediately turned to Lance's voice as if worrying that _Lance_ was in danger. 

Stupid, stupid Keith.

The sound of metal piercing flesh sounded clear through the hall as the people in the cells around them had gone quiet, watching.

"Keith!" Lance yelled as he spotted the knife sticking out of Keith's leg. "Shit, shit, shit." Lance sprinted out of the shadows, heading straight for Keith.

"Lance! Watch out!" Pidge's voice. 

Lance looked up just in time to see the fist flying at his face and grabbed it, pure rage setting his skin on fire. 

Meira smiled bitterly. "I see we have someone quite important with us today!" Her voice was twisted as she leaned in closer, ignoring the firm grip Lance had on her hand. "How did you like my performance at the funfair?" 

Lance groaned and lashed out, but Meira easily dodged him and pulled him up harshly. "Go on then, try!"

Lance twisted, trying to remember what Keith had taught him in training. He let go of his grip on Meira's fist and instead struck her throat with a flat hand. She gulped and chuckled as she grabbed his retreating hand and twisted it. Lance's hand burned, screaming for her to let go. 

"Keith trained you, didn't he? Your movements reek of him." 

She grabbed his other hand as he tried to hit her again. "You're cute, I wonder what the Alteans would give to get their precious Prince back, don't you?" 

Before Lance could do so much as blink in return to her question, a pale flash came from behind her, grabbing her and wrenching her away from Lance. 

Keith. 

Keith lifted a bloody knife - the knife that she had planted into his leg, Lance realized - and stabbed Meira's leg in return. She fell to the floor with a hiss of pain. Keith's face was paler than normally as he reached down and pulled the key out of her belt. When Keith stumbled forward Lance immediately wrapped his arm around him, catching him and carefully taking the key from his hands. 

"Here," Lance whispered in a voice that was unusually soft both in tone and meaning. "I'll do it."

Keith nodded, his eyes glazing over slightly, the stab was clearly affecting him.

The metal of the key was cold in Lance's hands as he walked over to the cell that held his friends. 

"Thank the Queen, Lance!" Hunk yelled. Pidge, however, stayed quiet, observing from the corner of the cell. She wasn't looking at Lance either, her eyes were dead-set on Keith.

"Pidge… ," Hunk started, trailing off as if exhausted. 

"So Shiro isn't Shiro after all, it turns out he's Keith, whoever that may be." Pidge's voice was as calculating as her stare, she wasn't judging, she was thinking. "And _Keith_ knew our attacker. They even fought the same." She paused. "Why?"

Lance and Hunk shot each other a look, Hunk looked confused but didn't quite seem to care as much as Pidge did. After Lance looked at Keith, his blood was gushing down his leg and his face pale. Now wasn’t the time to explain.

"Pidge it's-" Lance started before getting cut off by Keith.

"No Lance, I'll explain, it's fine," Keith said through gritted teeth. 

"Are you sure?" Lance asked softly his eyes drifting yet again to the bloody stab wound in Keith's leg.

Keith hummed in agreement, it sounded painful. "I used to train with Meira, the girl who attacked you." As if on que Meira let out a deep scoff, as if laughing at the memory. A look of pain flashed over Keith's face and Lance knew that that pain wasn't from the wound in his leg, not this time. "We both trained at the Blade of Marmora."

Hunk gasped. "Isn't that…"

"A Galra base? Yeah, I'm half Galra," Keith said, his tone tired. "I was assigned the mission of protecting Lance on one condition: I had to change my name."

"So, you changed it to Shiro," Pidge said, puzzling the pieces together. "Why does Lance know the real one then?"

Keith turned his gaze on Lance, inspecting him, _really_ seeing him. "Not important right now," Keith said eventually. "We have to leave this place first."

Pidge looked between the both of them and nodded slowly. "Yes, sure."

It was only when Lance had dragged Keith up and threw his arm around Lance's shoulder that he noticed a looming shadow behind them. 

It was Meira, forcing herself to stand, leaning against the black bars of the empty cell, her own knife still sticking out of her leg. "Go, you won Keithy, you did it again. You know, I knew you could do it, I knew you could pass the Test." She snickered, it was bitter, mixed with something else, sadness perhaps? "I'll beat you next time."

Lance felt Keith nod against him as they left the prison cells, Pidge and Hunk following close behind.

And somehow, Lance knew that Meira wouldn't be a problem again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HI sorry yet again for being gone for such a long time, I hope you kind of enjoyed this chapter even though it was a bit on the shorter side.  
> Have an amazing day/night and I'll see you in the next upload (or in the comments haha)  
> -Amber ;)


	17. personification and fixing old wounds

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Fail-safe trigger, lock-down call  
> Wipe the dry clean-slate, quick, sound the alarm  
> No escape from the truth and the weight of it all  
> I am caught in the web of a lie"  
> ~All Time Low (A Love Like War)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look at me, actually uploading on time! Also idk if you noticed already, but this fic is going to have 20 chapters (if everything goes according to plan that is), I worked out the scenes that have to occur and divided them accordingly over the span of the coming chapters: the fic is going to have two more _real_ chapters after this one and an epilogue, so, yeah, my baby's coming to an end :,(  
> Anyhows, enjoy and thank you _so_ much for 3k hits, I really appreciate it!!!!

"We have to find a way to heal him," Pidge said - indicating Keith - as soon as they left the prison cells behind.

Even though his eyesight was blurred by pain, Keith could see how Lance nodded resolutely above him. 

Keith immediately started struggling against the arms that were holding him up, presumably in an attempt to prove that he was okay. "We don't have time," he bit out. "We need to get out of here! Don't waste time on me!"

Two tanned arms wrapped him in an even tighter embrace, forcing him to stop his little struggle. "Keith," Lance said, he sounded tired and _worried_. Was it because of Keith? He didn't want to be the cause of Lance's suffering, never that. "We're not _wasting_ any time by healing you before doing anything else: you are in no condition to travel let alone _fight_. Besides we care about you, _I_ care about you.”

Keith could see Pidge nodding beside Lance, her face looming over him just like Lance's did, a frown etched into her face. "I don't say this often, but Lance is right. We need you on full strength."

Hunk's face suddenly joined in floating above, and now they were all looming over him, with Lance in the middle. Lance seemed to be in the middle of Keith's vision a lot nowadays. Not that he was complaining. 

"We owe you this man, you're our _friend_ , who knows what would happen if we left you like this," Hunk's deep voice said, filled to the brim with concern.

Keith felt a frown settle onto his face, but he couldn't bring himself to say anything: he was so tired. He could barely feel the blood dripping down his leg anymore, the stabbing wound felt numb, reduced to a dull ache. 

Keith was _so_ tempted to close his eyes, but a tiny voice on the edge of his consciousness told him that that was a _very_ bad idea, so, no matter how tempting the idea, he clung to that tiny voice and tried to focus on Lance's face.

"Shit," he heard Hunk say. "he's losing too much blood!"

Lance's mouth moved next. "We need to move, now!"

Keith felt the world beneath him shift and stop and continuing to differ between the two every moment. Soon Keith’s concept of time was reduced to when they would stop to hide or move a tiny bit to avoid people seeing them. They were still wearing the Galran uniforms but Keith vaguely realized that it would be _very_ suspicious to see three people dragging a bleeding, half passed out person through the halls.

“We can’t keep avoiding these people, we need to find sick bay!” Pidge hissed, her sharp voice blurrier than it should be.. 

Before anyone could answer her they heard another voice, and even though it was far away from where they seemed to be standing, the voice was vague but audible to Keith’s ears. “Shit, stupid training sims, we need to take Shriv to sick bay to go into one of the pods there! Where was Meira anyway? Wasn’t she supposed to cover him just now?” 

“Yeah she was.” Another voice. “But she hasn’t been herself lately, she’s way too obsessed with the whole Altea Mission for some reason, I don’t believe she would be of much use anyway. If you take his arms, I’ll take his legs. Let's get this guy to sickbay, and _fast_.”

Lance, Hunk and Pidge all shared a _look_ and nodded at each other, just a second later Lance turned towards Keith again and whispered very softly, “Keith, you’re going to have to hold on for a bit okay? We’re going to get you to safety.”

It was not long before the world started to spin: they were running. And even though Keith was only half present he could practically feel Lance’s short breaths against the skin of his neck as Keith tried to make himself as light to carry as possible. A blur of wall and purple passed by, almost as if they were in one of the Blade’s fast ships, traveling through the galaxy and passing everything in a haze. 

“Hang in there.” Lance concerned voice seemed far away, unattainable almost, too unattainable. 

Darkness settled around Keith, threatening to swallow him whole, tempting him to simply _let go_.

Until…

A flare of pain on his cheek and his eyes flew open, staring straight into a frowning face.

“Don’t fall asleep on me Keith, just a bit longer, I’m sure we’re almost there.” Something shone through in those beautiful deep blue eyes: desperation. “Please Keith, don’t bleed to death on me here.”

A hint of recognition was suddenly set alight in Keith’s mind; those eyes were Lance’s. He couldn’t let Lance down. Anything but that. “Okay,” Keith eventually said in a voice that wasn’t his own in the slightest.

Lance’s frown only got worse. That hadn’t been what Keith had wanted. “Hunk,” Lance whispered. “Can you rip off a long piece of your cloak?” He paused. “We should’ve done this earlier.” 

Keith heard the faint sound of fabric ripping behind him and soon after Lance’s soft voice again. He had a good voice Keith decided. “This is going to hurt a bit.” Lance’s eyes turned away from Keith for a second to face Pidge. “You can do this better than I can Pidge.” 

They were still walking as tight fabric was wrapped around Keith’s leg all of the sudden, blocking the blood flow to his wound right below it slightly. The ache of the fabric was barely even there for Keith as his leg still felt numb, it was almost as if his body was rejecting the pain to the best of its ability. 

The world stopped spinning. 

“They went through this door,” Hunk said. 

“But how do we get past all the enemy soldiers, and even better, even if we _do_ by some miracle get past the soldiers, what do we get? I mean normally we would put him in one of the sleeping pods, but for obvious reasons that’s going to be a bit difficult right now,” Lance said, his voice hasty, panicky almost.

“Well, I have no clue what to do about the soldiers, _but_ I do know that we could go inside and get Palmera Ointment, it burns more than going into the sleeping pods, but it’s faster, works almost equally as well and every sickbay I’ve been in has it, even the ones that weren’t in Altea, nobody uses it preferably, but you know, accidents in the kitchen happen all the time and we never have time to go into the pods,” Hunk said, voice almost as hurried as Lance’s. 

“Right so we go in to get the weird ointment and prey that they happen to have it, but what about the soldiers?” Pidge asked, her voice the definition of calm compared to the other two. 

Hunk and Lance shared a look of complete loss: it was obvious that they had no idea about what exactly to do.

Suddenly a very prominent sound broke through the loaded silence, and even Keith’s own damaged body seemed to recognize it with a start: blaring alarms.

A voice through some unlocated speakers: “All available soldiers to main entrance! I repeat all available soldiers to main entrance! External intruders detected!”

Pidge mouthed a word that looked suspiciously like ‘Allura’ and Keith realized that she was right, Allura had the coordinates, she was leading an attack on this ship. Keith hadn’t known Allura for long but he knew that she was strong like this, she was a born leader. 

People were leaving sick bay before them in a hurry, making their way to the main entrance as fast as they could, barely even noticing Pidge, Hunk, Lance and Keith standing there. Lance dragged Keith behind a wall in one quick swoop, presumably waiting for the alarms to stop. 

When the alarms _did_ stop it was eerily quiet, even to Keith’s ears it seemed unnatural, until Lance spoke up. “I’ll go into sickbay to look for the ointment, Keith can’t go in and if by chance there’s any soldier left in there, I’m the best fighter after Keith.”

“You can’t go in!” Keith said to the best of his ability. “You’re the prince! You need to stay safe! You-” 

Lance put a finger on his lips and he abruptly stopped talking. “Quiet,” Lance whispered.

“You can’t go in. You are too important,” Keith whispered softly, pain shining through in his voice.

Lance arched a brow. “Then what do you propose? _You_ can definitely not go in. Hell, you can barely walk.”

Keith tried to stand, trying to prove to Lance, that he could, in fact, go in himself, only his body seemed to disagree, because it immediately fell down, causing him to fall straight back into Lance’s arms. Keith cursed under his breath. 

“Well,” Pidge said coolly. “If _Keith’s_ done with his exposition of extreme power, can we make a decision? I for one think that it’s important that one of us gets in there, and _fast_.”

“Sorry,” Hunk said, addressing Keith. “As much as I hate the idea of Lance going in there, I don’t see any other option, Pidge and I both aren’t equipped to fight at all, and even though Lance himself isn’t the best either, with you out of the game we don’t really have another plan.”

Pidge nodded. “I agree with Hunk, Lance if you’re okay with this?”

Lance nodded at the same time that Keith started to furiously shake his head in definite disagreement. 

“Sorry Keith.” Lance smiled. “I have to do this.”

Lance softly put Keith into Hunk’s arms and rose to his feet, before giving a quick wave. “See you all soon!” He turned around, rounded the corner and as they heard the sweeping sound that the opening door made they knew that Lance had entered sick bay. 

What followed was a tension filled silence in which Keith was more awake than he had been ever since he got stabbed, waiting for the blue eyed boy that he was _supposed to_ protect to come back. 

“You know that he’ll return right?” Hunk’s deep voice asked from above. 

“I’m supposed to protect _him_ not the other way around, this is bullshit,” Keith bit out. 

“We know,” Hunk said. “But this is not your fault, and now it’s our turn to help _you_ to the best of our ability. I’m sure if you would ask Lance he would tell you that this has nothing to do with his job or even your job, this is just about him caring about you in one way or the other.” 

Somehow this touched Keith way more than it should: it was logical that Lance cared about him: they’d been friends since the orphanage, but Keith felt so much more at Hunk’s statement than just that old friendship. But what was it if not friendship? 

Oh.

_Oh._

Keith’s jumbled mind seemed to come to thousands of conclusions at once, the ever present pain fading to the background for a second, only to be replaced by utter confusion: none of it made sense, yet all of it did. 

Shit. 

He really _really_ liked Lance. 

And he couldn’t do anything about it. 

Not now, possibly not ever. 

The sound of a door sweeping open got Keith’s attention, replacing the panic with relief when Lance came walking towards them, carrying some kind of purple tube. 

“Are you okay?!” Hunk asked before Keith could bring his mouth to move. 

“Yeah I’m fine, there was literally _no one_ inside, well except from a few people in sleeping pods, but what are they going to do? Attack me in their dreams?” Lance snickered softly and held up the purple tube in his hand. “Here’s the ointment, it took me a hot minute to find, so it better be the right one.” 

“Yeah it is,” Hunk said, before turning back to Keith. “Can you apply it yourself?” 

Keith tried reaching his wound but soon found that he wasn’t able to reach it properly.  
“I don’t think so,” he said, voice filled with pain and a slight tinge of embarrassment. 

“No matter,” Lance said. “I can do it, it’s fine. Besides you did it for me as well, remember?” A slight smirk graced his features as he smiled. 

Keith couldn't even start to refuse or Lance had already lifted him to rest his head on Hunk’s left leg and sat down next to Keith’s wound, slowly taking a bit of white ointment out of the tube and smearing it onto his leg. The burn that the ointment left behind was undeniable and Keith instinctively bit down on his teeth while Hunk softly pressed down on his shoulders, forcing Keith to stay down. 

“Sorry,” Lance whispered apologetically while smearing a bit more on. 

Keith groaned out a string of curses. He felt the sting of a new burn and his eyesight began to blur again. 

Then, without warning, the burn began to lift and only a numb ache was left, the blur that had been ever present in his mind also disappeared and Keith suddenly became painfully aware of the hand stroking his leg softly. 

“Wow,” Lance said, as if not realizing that his hand was still tracing circles around Keith’s left kneecap. “The wound just kind of shrunk in on itself!” He turned to Keith. “Does it still hurt?” 

“No, no the pain is pretty much gone.” Keith paused, trying to ignore the distraction that Lance’s hand provided and sitting up from Hunk’s lap. “It’s just a dull ache now.” 

“Okay well,” Pidge said, rising to her feet. “If Lance is done stroking Keith’s knee, I think we should we go and help Allura out.” 

Lance quickly removed his hand from Keith’s knee and left only a tingling sensation behind. “Allura?” Lance questioned, avoiding Keith’s eyes. 

“Yes, who do you think made those alarms go off?! Allura knows the coordinates! Besides even if it _weren’t_ Allura, any attacker of this ship, no matter who, is a good one right?” 

“Right, and how _exactly_ were you planning on helping her?” Lance asked. 

“Well, we can’t do much from here, but if we somehow managed to keep the entrance to this ship opened, she and her troops could intrude and beat Lotor from the inside. That might be easier than fighting out in space.” 

“But how do you want to keep the gates opened? The control room has to be filled to the brim with higher ups right now,” Hunk said, visibly confused. 

Suddenly Keith realized something. “This ship is a lot like the Blade of Marmora’s base and on there you have two control rooms, the main one, that is always used, and a second one, like a back-up for when the main one fails. Our best bet is trying to find the second control room if there is one.” 

Keith stood up and went to look back into the main hall; it was completely deserted. “At the back of the ship.” 

He took one deep breath in and let it slowly flow back out. 

“Follow me.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoyed this chapter! I can't believe this fic is slowly coming to an end, I might just sob a tiny bit.  
> Thank you for reading, see you in the next chapter and I hope you have an _amazing_ day/night ;)  
> -Amber


	18. prosecution and the danger of getting caught

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "There's a room where the light won't find you  
> Holding hands while the walls come tumbling down  
> When they do I'll be right behind you  
> So glad we've almost made it  
> So sad they had to fade it  
> Everybody wants to rule the world"  
> ~Tears for Fears (Everybody Wants to Rule the World)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi guys, a _lot_ of shit goes down in this chapters, so um, I'll just leave you to um enjoy it I guess :)

Keith led them all through the halls, following his intuition and praying that it was right. Behind him Lance, Pidge and Hunk were panting but trailing him closeby nonetheless, they didn’t question the decisions and paths that he took. In the subconscious part of his mind Keith felt a soft tingle of warmth at being trusted so freely, but he quickly brushed it off, needing himself to stay focused on the road ahead. 

The base they were in _clearly_ had taken a lot of inspiration from the Blade of Marmora: halls often were familiar in shape, size and direction and now that they were mostly empty, Keith recognized the corridors. He couldn’t quite understand _why_ this base was so much like the Blade, he knew that the Blade was well protected and efficient but why copy practically half of the halls and where they led to? It didn’t make sense. Was it out of spite? To show the Blade that they could have the same base but better? Was it because of the Blade’s efficiency? Keith didn’t know if he would ever find out. All that he _did_ know was that the similarities between the Blade and this base worked in their advantage at the moment. 

As they were running Keith spotted a _very_ familiar door on their left.

He felt his eyes widen with surprise at the room being this easy to find. It shouldn’t be this easy right?

“It’s here,” Keith said softly, his whisper echoing through the deserted hall. 

“Well,” Pidge said. “that was surprisingly easy, are you sure this is it?”

“Yes,” Keith answered. “It looks too much like the room at the Blade for it not to be the same place.”

“What are we waiting for then? Let’s go inside and help ‘Lura,” Lance said, his voice breathy from all the running. 

Keith nodded and grabbed the black door knob, as soon as he did though, a strange trickle ran across his spine, making him shiver. He didn’t know why but the door knob didn’t feel _natural_ , it didn’t feel completely _real_. Keith shook the feeling off and even though he felt slightly weird about getting inside now, it wasn’t going to help them anyway, not right now. So Keith turned the door knob to reveal… 

The exact same space that he had seen dozens of times at the Blade: a small half circle of a room, with the minimum amount of lights, and a large control panel with multi colored buttons tracing the edge of the circle. It looked the same down to the placement of the little screens that showed the camera footage from outside of the ship. 

“Wow,” Hunk said behind him. “this is pretty cool.”

Keith felt a slight sense of uneasiness coil in his stomach, something was off. 

“Okay, so what should we do?” Lance asked, looking around, his finger hovering over a blue button. 

Keith was abruptly pulled out of his musings as he saw Lance’s finger. “Don’t touch that!”

Lance removed his finger as if the button had burned him and from the corner of his eyes Keith could see how Pidge was pinching the bridge of her nose in frustration. He couldn’t help but agree.

“I think I already kind of know how this panel works, I might need Pidge’s help to figure everything out though,” Keith said. “Our best bet is probably trying to keep the entrance opened so that Allura and the army can enter, it’s just a matter of figuring out _how_.”

“Yeah, I’ll help,” Pidge said calmly. “You two.” She addressed Hunk and Lance with a glare. “Don’t touch _anything_.” With that she turned back to Keith and nodded once, indicating that she was ready. 

Keith looked around on the various screens that were lit up in front of them and it didn’t take him long to spot the ship in blue and white that was situated in front of the Galran ship, as expected. “There,” Keith said, pointing to the screen that was documenting the camera footage of the Altean castle. 

“Okay so we need to find a way to keep the entrance opened right?” Pidge asked. 

“Yeah, the handle should be around this screen somewhere, but I don’t know which one it is.” There were three handles in front of the screen, that portrayed the Altean ship, one of them had to be the handle to keep the entrance closest to the ship opened, but Keith simply didn’t know which one, and they couldn’t risk pulling the wrong one. 

Pidge hummed and adjusted her glasses, leaning in closer to the handles.

“Oh!” Lance suddenly yelled out. “Are we checking which handle works? Let me try!” 

And before Keith could do anything, Lance had already grabbed the middle handle and with one sharp movement, pulled the handle towards him. The handle gave a loud ‘click’ and everyone in the room was quiet with anticipation, all seemingly processing what had just happened. 

“You-” Pidge started in disbelief. “You… You didn’t just… For the Queen’s sake! Lance! Shit! Do you have any idea what you just did?! You are absolutely and utterly-”

“Pidge… ,” Hunk interrupted. 

“Don’t ‘Pidge’ me Hunk,” Pidge said without looking at him. “He needs to be lectured! Lance I swear to-”

“Pidge!“ Hunk yelled out, this time drawing the attention from everyone in the room. 

He was pointing at the screens. 

More specifically, he was pointing at the screen with the Altean ship on it.

It looked like little blue dots were moving towards this base at first glance, but when Keith took a closer look he saw that they were actually tiny Altean shooters coming to this ship, disappearing from the camera’s view as they entered the Galran base. 

“Lance pulled the right handle… ,” Pidge whispered, eyes wide, full of shock, before a broad grin took hold of her face. “We did it!”

“Excuse you,” Lance said. “I think you meant to say that _I_ did it.”

“Yeah whatever, let’s get to the entrance, I’m sure that-”

Pidge was abruptly cut off by a loud rumbling underneath their feet. 

“What was that?!” Lance yelled out. 

Before anyone could answer though, the purple light suddenly started changing, the black walls became lighter and lighter and the buttons on the control panel started faltering, their soft lights flashing and dimming. 

“Why did the purple lights turn blue?” Hunk asked, rightfully confused, his brows arched.

“Shit!” Lance cursed as he suddenly fell to the floor, the control panel disappearing beneath his hands, making space for a random pillar. 

Pidge shot Keith a glance, and he knew that they were both thinking the same thing as the walls turned a silvery white. 

“The base is changing into the Altean palace,” Keith stated. 

“What?!” Lance looked around frantically and Keith could see the exact moment that Lance finally recognized the place, his brows arched into a frown. 

“I should’ve known,” Keith said, exhausted. “It was too easy.” The base had been _too_ much like the Blade of Marmora, to the point that some places were direct copies of where he used to live, there was no reason for Lotor to change the base into an exact copy of the Blade _unless_ he had known that they were coming. Lotor had known that Keith would probably find the way around here, he had _known_ that Keith would know the way to the second control room, he had bet on it. Them being in this base had never been a secret, Lotor had always known that they would sneak in one way or another. The Galra had already been waiting for a battle, they were prepared for the Alteans to enter and Keith had led the Alteans directly into their trap. 

_Shit_ .

“They knew we were here, didn’t they?” Hunk asked, voice small.

Keith nodded. “We have to leave this place, and _fast_.”

The farther they ran from the place where the second control room had previously been, the more they heard the clanking of sword against sword and rough battlecries: it sounded like mayhem. 

“Look what we have here!” A voice from their right suddenly pierced through the sounds of battle before them. 

Three Galran soldiers moved towards them, slowly, as if ganging up on their prey, their bayards pointed at them in a threatening manner, but they didn’t shoot. Keith quickly shoved Pidge, Hunk and Lance behind him, against a wall, and went to pull out his knife, ready to fight, before he could do anything, however, he heard Lance’s yell. Keith sharply turned only to see that he, Pidge and Hunk had fallen backwards, straight into… the training hall. Keith turned back to face the soldiers but their bayards were now practically pressed into his face, he couldn’t do anything. 

“Get inside,” the person, who had spoken up before, said. “He’s been waiting, you know? It’s not polite to keep people waiting.” 

Keith had never wanted to wipe a grin off someone’s face so badly, as he was forced into the training hall. It was the exact same as the actual Altean training hall, only darker: the neon blue light dim and the room covered in shadows. 

“So,” a smooth silky voice rang through the loaded silence as soon as Lance, Pidge and Hunk were forcefully pulled up to their feet by the soldiers. “I presume you’ve figured out most of it by now?”

Silence from everyone was the only thing that answered the voice. 

“Right, I’ll take that as a yes then. You know,” the voice continued as the shadows in the room seemed to shift. “it’s not polite to ignore people either, for people that work in a palace your etiquette is kind of bad isn’t it?”

“But then again,” the voice said as a man slowly seemed to appear from the shadows. “I haven’t introduced myself yet, so that’s probably improper as well.” The sound of chuckling came from the direction of the voice. A tall man stepped out of the darkness: his ears were sharp, his hair silvery and long, and his skin a light purple shade, the man wore a smile that was unsettlingly peaceful at best. “I’m Lotor.”

“Don’t worry,” Lotor continued when no one answered him yet again. “you don’t need to introduce yourselves, I already know all of your names, you’ve spent quite the time snooping around my base, it was fun to watch if I’m honest. You know we have cameras don’t you?”

“The girl, Meira, leaving behind the lantern couldn’t have been intentional! There were too many coincidences there for that to be true. You couldn’t have possibly known that I would buy it!” Pidge spouted out, not bothering with whatever game Lotor was playing. 

Lotor grinned. “Getting straight to the point I see. It wasn’t intentional, Meira was just there to spook Lance, but we quickly saw how great of an opportunity we had at our hands, we knew you would figure it out, and we were ready for you. We have been since the time you bought that lantern.”

“This really is the best outcome to our plan we could’ve ever wished for, now we won’t only have the Princess but also the Prince of Altea, this is just getting better and better,” Lotor said, the shark-like grin still plastered on his face. 

Suddenly a memory popped into Keith’s mind and he smiled: this was the Altean training room meaning… Keith looked around and when he found that he was standing in the exact right place his grin grew ever broader. He launched his elbow backward, hitting the wall of the training hall hard, and as expected a drawer opened up. The bayards of the soldiers were on Keith in a split second, but they were too late, seeing that Keith had the blue bayard, retrieved from the drawer, already pointed at Lotor. 

“Go on then, shoot,” Lotor said, still suspiciously calm.

The soldiers still had their guns pointed at Keith but looked away from him for a second to shoot Lotor worried and surprised glances.

“But sir-,” one of the soldiers murmured. 

Lotor turned to soldier who spoke up, a glint of something strange in his eyes. “Let. Him. Shoot.”

The soldiers immediately recoiled. “Yes sir.” 

Lotor turned back to Keith and his smile grew broader. “Well, go on then, as entertaining as this is, I haven’t got all day.”

Keith frowned: Lotor shouldn’t be this excited about getting shot right?

“You really are something Kogane… .” Lotor seemed to ponder over Keith’s hesitation for a moment until, suddenly, his eyes lit up, as if forming an idea in his head. “Shoot! You can’t comprehend what I will do to our darling Prince Lance and the rest of that filthy Altean palace crew! You can’t even begin to understand what torture I will make them go through! They will suffer Keith! Lance’s screams will-”

Keith shot. 

The sound of a trigger being released filled the room, cutting whatever disgusting words Lotor was going to say next off, but, that was all, the sound of a trigger nothing more, no blast, nothing at all. 

Lotor burst out in laughter. “That really was as entertaining as I thought it would be.” 

Once Lotor had calmed down, he continued, tone serious again. “Listen Keith, I really don’t want to fight you.” He took a step forward, closer to where Keith was standing. “No, the contrary really, I want to work with you, because, you see, I’m going to take down every single planet and their colonies one by one: I have the army, the power, the money, and whether you like it or not, you won’t be able to do anything about it.” 

“How long have people treated you badly? How long have people made assumptions just because you’re half Galra? How long have people pestered you just because you are the same race as that old Zarkon? You have so much potential, so much more than just being a scapegoat. I mean _Keith_ you can blend in _anywhere_ , you would be an amazing asset to our team! You can finally be fully accepted! We won’t ever force you to change your name to seem less Galra, you won’t ever have to hide your identity! You can finally find a home. With us,” Lotor finished, his eyes full of something that could easily be mistaken for compassion.

Keith arched a brow, lowering the useless bayard. “Is that what you told Meira too?”

Lotor smiled. “That was different… but then again, isn’t she better off here?” 

“She’s bleeding dry in the prison,” Pidge offered rather drily.

“If you had known that we were here, by the hand of cameras, you also knew that I fought Meira, yet you didn’t step in to help her,” Keith said, following up on Pidge’s statement. 

“Yes well, that’s different, you were more important, we couldn’t risk our plan to fail.” Lotor paused, setting another step in Keith’s direction. “You have so much more talent Keith, please let us be your new home, we _will_ protect you.”

“Sorry, no can’t do.” And with that Keith crossed the final bit of distance and launched his fist forward, right into Lotor’s face. 

Suddenly a series of things happened. 

A shot was fired. 

Right at Keith. 

And Keith _knew_ that it was going to hit him, he felt it in every bone, every _fraction_ of his soul was alight with it. 

“Keith!”

A figure, fast like lightning, crossed the blast’s path. The awful sound of a blast destroying flesh ripped through the silence. 

Only it wasn’t Keith’s flesh.

“Lance!” Keith didn’t recognize his own voice. It was raw and pained. And as Lance fell to the floor in a heap, blood pooling around him in a circle Keith couldn’t do anything his body was completely frozen, his face wrenched up in a painful expression, unable to stop staring at Lance’s gaping wound. 

All of a sudden the training simulation turned on. 

Chaos broke out around him as dozens of fake soldiers suddenly popped up, attacking the Galran soldiers with fierce power. Keith vaguely registered how Pidge moved away from the ‘on’ button in the corner of the hall and turned to him. 

“Keith! Now!” she yelled. 

Keith knew exactly what she meant and he turned around to face a Lotor that was distracted by a simulated soldier trying to choke him. Keith took out his own glistening blade as images of Lance bleeding flashed through his mind, the scent of his blood still tainting the hall. 

Keith knew that the simulations couldn’t actually kill Lotor.

But he could. 

And so with one sharp move; Keith stabbed Lotor. In his neck, where he would definitely die. Lotor opened his mouth, but was unable to scream since the sim was still choking him. It was a miserable way to die. Pathetic even. 

Keith felt no remorse. 

Pidge must’ve moved closer as Keith was able to feel her breath in his ear. “We need to escape now that we can, Hunk has Lance.”

Keith nodded numbly and let himself be dragged away by Pidge. Soldiers around them barely noticed their departure as they were still tangled in battle with the training sim. Pidge must’ve put it on ‘hard’ mode.

They walked out the door and shut the Galra inside, the chaos of the training hall immediately being replaced by the chaos of a completely different battle around them. 

“We need to leave this ship now! Lance is breathing, but he’s not going to be able to survive for much longer!” Hunk yelled, carrying a passed out, bleeding Lance bridal style. Keith saw how Hunk had wrapped another part of his cloak tightly around the skin above the wound, trying to stop the blood flow but not really succeeding. 

Keith forced himself into focus, wrenching his eyes away from Lance. “You two know where the Altean departure ships usually are, right? We are currently in a ship with the same layout as the Altean castle, we need to get Lance to safety, back to the Altean ship.”

Pidge nodded, understanding Keith. “Follow me!” 

Keith went to run next to her, pushing fighting soldiers away left and right with the slash of his sword, creating a more or less free path for Hunk to pass through. They ran through hall after hall, some Keith recognized others he didn’t, he was too focused on Lance to properly make sense of his surroundings, too focused on the fast dripping of Lance’s blood, too focused on the way it painted the floor. 

He _did_ notice that their surroundings got darker, though, as they seemed to be in some kind of basement. There also were less and less soldiers fighting here, until, at a certain point, Keith didn’t have to fight anyone off at all.

“We’re almost there!” Pidge yelled, her voice strained from all the running. 

She screeched to a halt in front of a big dark blue door. “Here!” she looked down at the control panel next to the door, it looked exactly the same as the Altean one. “I wonder if… .” Pidge pressed her thumb to the biometric scanner and at first nothing seemed to happen, until suddenly the door groaned and started moving open.

Behind the door were dozens of _very_ Galra-looking ships.

“This’ll do,” Pidge said. “Keith, choose one of the ships, Hunk, place Lance inside, and I’ll open the first hatch to the tube that’ll hopefully get us to space.”

Keith walked over to the ship that seemed most stable and yelled at Hunk to get inside with him. Hunk ran over and together they placed Lance in one of the chairs, trying to position him in such a way that the least blood would come out. 

“Keith!” Pidge yelled as she stepped inside. “Can you pilot this thing? I opened the first hatch and the second hatch will open in three minutes. If we don’t want to get aimlessly sucked into space I suggest we start moving into the tube now!”

Keith looked around. “It’s a lot like the Blade’s tech, I think I can pilot this.” He quickly took place at the control panel of the ship and clicked on the button that in one of the Blade’s ship would launch the motors. 

The ship started roaring, indicating that the motors had started. 

“Great, now get us into the tube!”

Keith moved a handle and the ship shot forward, straight into the first hatch, as the hatch closed behind them Pidge let out a relieved sigh, only for that to be replaced by a scream when the second hatch opened: sucking them into the void of space relentlessly. 

Keith found his way around the ship rather fast as they moved among the stars: it was a lot less fluid than the Blade’s tech, but still enough like it so that Keith could understand what he had to do. The Altean castle was clearly visible, the shield raised around it shimmering blue.

A blue blast suddenly came straight at them, hitting them right in the forefront of the ship. 

“What the actual-” Pidge screamed out as they tumbled through space, disoriented. 

“The Altean ship is firing at us, we are in a Galran ship” Keith bit out as he was trying to dodge the blasts coming their way.

Pidge let out a string of curses as she started to grab around on the control panel. “We need to tell them it’s us!”

“The communication panel of the ship should be on the right side of the main control panel!”

Pidge nodded and started pressing various buttons, and ripping cables apart, while connecting them to other cables with a spark, while Keith was still steering the ship in various loops and maneuvers, dodging the blasts.

“We don’t have the time and space to check if this works, so here goes nothing I guess.” Pidge connected the two last cables with each other and spoke loudly into the microphone positioned on the far right end of the panel. “I don’t know if you can hear this but if you do stop firing! It’s me Pidge! Hunk, Keith and Lance are also here! Lance is wounded! We don’t have much time to explain! Please let us in or he’ll bleed out!”

The blasts kept on coming as if nothing had happened and Pidge lowered her head into her hands in defeat.

Only for her head to shoot up in surprise when the blasts suddenly stopped. 

“It worked!” Hunk yelled.

Keith’s felt his lips turn upward slightly, a tiny glimmer of hope peaking through the darkness of space.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> BABY LANCE IS HURT :'((( (they really do be getting hurt in practically every chapter im--)
> 
> So um how was it? Lemme know in the comments! There'll be one more 'real' chapter and the other one will be the epilogue ;)\
> 
> I hope you have an amazing day/night !!  
> -Amber


	19. pain and confessions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Je te laisserai des mots _I will leave you words_  
>  En-dessous de ta porte _below your door_  
>  En-dessous de la lune qui chante _below the singing moon_  
>  Tout près de la place où tes pieds passent _all near the place where your feet pass_  
>  Cachés dans les trous d'un temps d'hiver _hidden in the holes of winter time_  
>  Et quand tu es seule pendant un instant... _and when you're alone for a moment..._
> 
> Embrasse-moi _kiss me_  
>  Quand tu voudras _when you want_ "  
> ~Patrick Watson (Je Te Laisserai Des Mots) This was translated by me and even though I followed French for 3 years at school, this text might still be translated with a mistake. Don't be afraid to let me know if I made one!!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome to the emotional rollercoaster!!! WHO WANTS A TICKET???!!!??!!?
> 
> hehehehehhehe
> 
> That's all I've gotta say about this chapter tbh

Lance’s head felt empty. Light almost.

He wasn’t thinking anything, his mind was completely devoid of any emotion or memory. 

He slowly opened his eyes, only to find himself in one of the healing pods at the Altean castle. He was calm, peaceful: no doubts, anger, sadness or pain. 

He spotted a pale, black haired, sleeping boy curled up before his pod. Even in the boy’s sleep, worry seemed to line his features and it looked like time had tracked his face. Something inside of Lance wanted to reach out, out of the pod, to wipe those lines off of the boy’s face. 

It was only when the eyes of the boy before him opened - revealing a deep purple - that Lance began to _feel_ , to _remember_. 

Every emotion flooded him and Lance fell forward from the impact, not able to hold his stance in the pod any longer. The Altean pod seemed to sense Lance’s movement because it slid open, letting Lance fall to the ground. 

Or at least he would’ve fallen to the ground if it wasn’t for the arms wrapping around him, enveloping Lance in a staggeringly familiar jasmine scent that brought so many emotions and memories. 

It was undeniably Keith. 

Lance suddenly remembered _why_ he was in a pod in the first place and his face heated up at the memory. 

Keith’s hands tightened around Lance’s arm. “Why would you do that?!” Keith yelled frustration spilling out in his voice. “You could’ve died, you know? I’m supposed to protect _you_ , not the other way around.”

Lance wasn’t quite ready to admit why he had done what he did yet, and he didn’t know if he would ever be. 

So, instead he did what he did best, he avoided the question. “How long have I been asleep?” His voice sounded calm, successfully masking the confusion and anxiety he was feeling inside.  
“Two weeks,” Keith’s stare was hard and his eyes narrowed.

Lance felt his own eyes widen in surprise. His voice was hoarse and small when he spoke again. “Two weeks?” 

What would ‘Lura think, hell, what would the kingdom think when they heard that their _Prince_ had been out for _two weeks_? He was the Prince he was expected to recover quickly, especially with the help of the Altean healing pods. “Why wasn’t I healed in two days?” Lance mumbled. 

Keith’s eyes narrowed even further, seemingly sensing every single insecurity coiling within Lance. “Lance,” Keith said slowly, stretching every single syllable as if to make a point. “You were stabbed and bleeding dry for so long that it’s a miracle that you even survived at all. It wouldn’t have been healthy for you to be healed in two days.”

Lance lowered his eyes, watching the white floor with arched brows. “Everyone always heals within two days.”

“Quiznak,” Keith mumbled under his breath. “Lance-” Keith put two of his fingers underneath Lance’s chin, their skins connecting, sending sparks throughout Lance’s body. Keith was forcing him to look into his eyes. “You don’t heal within two days when you’ve almost died, trust me, I should know.”

Lance deflected the subject again, his insecurities still getting the better of him. “So, what happened when I was knocked out?”

“Well,” Keith started. “While you were on the ground, Pidge turned on the training sim, it was chaos really, but the Galran soldiers were distracted enough for me to kill Lotor and for us to leave without much of a hassle after that. Hunk carried you through the halls while Pidge led us to the shooters. We needed to find a way to get out as fast as possible without having you lose too much blood. We left the Galran ship with a Galran shooter, making the Alteans think we were Galra, they started shooting at us until Pidge found a way to make contact with the castle. Eventually they let us in, that’s where our adventure ended.” Keith shrugged. “Allura later told us that without Lotor, the Galra didn’t really fight as much anymore, letting the Alteans defeat them with relatively much ease. Rather anticlimactic really, but fortunate for us.”

“Wait,” Lance said, his mind still stuck on one thing. “You killed Lotor?”

 _“Tell them that Lotor said hi.”_ The sentence repeated itself like a mantra in Lance’s head. It had been said to him at the funfair, moments before he had finally passed out, from the pain and confusions that the attack had caused him, and it hadn’t fully left his mind since: the dark shadows of that night always tracing the edge of Lance’s consciousness. Could it be that Lotor was finally truly gone?

“Mhm, yeah,” Keith hummed, a question written in his eyes. 

Lance almost sagged into himself from relief, his knees growing weak, so weak that Keith had to wrap his arm around him again.

 _He was dead_. “Lotor is really dead,” Lance’s own voice sounded incredulous, weak and relieved all at once.

Keith’s lips turned upwards the tiniest bit. “Yes.”

And at that Lance couldn’t help but curl up into Keith’s arms, as if chasing the idea that Lotor truly _was_ gone. 

\--

“Reyes the super robot is officially done guys!” Pidge yelled. 

It had been a week since Lance had woken up, and life seemed to go back to normal, well normal except from…

“I wanted to have it finished before you leave,” Pidge said, turning to Keith with an expression of almost sadness on her face. 

“Why do you have to leave anyway?” Hunk asked, his head on Shay’s shoulder. 

Keith shrugged. “This mission was only temporary, it was only to defeat Lotor and protect Lance while doing so, it was never supposed to be something more or longer.”

Keith was leaving in three days: the Blade of Marmora had called him back to prepare for another mission. And even though it was none of his business: Lance couldn’t help but wonder who Keith would be with next. Was it going to be a beautiful princess? A handsome maid? Another fearless warrior like Keith himself?

Lance’s emotions swirled through his chest, tying together in awfully painful knots, all the knots seemed to come to one unanimous conclusion: he didn’t want Keith to go. 

Well shit. 

That might be a problem. 

Lance _knew_ with every bone in his body that he couldn’t let Keith leave again, but he also knew that he probably wouldn’t be able to do anything about it. 

Lance pondered this over, never stopping at one conclusion or solution for none of them were good enough. Lance didn’t just need Keith to stay he needed him to stay with _him_. It was confusing. 

Lance had first realized something was different within himself moments before he jumped in front of Keith: shielding him from the blast that would’ve inevitably killed him. It was a tiny shift in Lance’s emotions, opening a new world of feeling for himself that all in one way or another revolved around Keith. 

These new feelings had swirled inside of him ever since he woke up from the healing pod and they hadn’t stopped interfering with his life since. 

“So, what do you think Lance?” Pidge pulled Lance out of his thoughts, and as he looked up he saw that everyone in the tech lab was staring at him with questioning faces. 

“What do I think about what?” he asked, realizing that he had zoned out of whatever conversation they were having in the room.

Pidge rolled her eyes. “About letting Keith join us for our monthly dinner?” The name ‘Keith’ still felt foreign coming from Pidge’s lips. After Lance had explained the whole story - with Keith budding in sometimes to add something - it still had taken a lot of time for Hunk, Pidge and ‘Lura to get used to the name. Sometimes Lance would even catch Hunk in the middle of saying ‘Shiro’, only for him to go red after noticing what he was doing. 

“Yeah, I mean sure.” Lance’s own voice sounded more worn out that he’d meant it to sound, but he couldn’t really bring himself to care.

Lance caught the faint worried frown on Keith’s face before Lance lowered his eyes again, zoning out. 

Everyone in the castle had gone back to the way it was before Lotor ever came around and now with Keith leaving, the last traces of the attack ever existing in the first place would be erased forever. The Altean castle had always been like this: picking up and moving on, not paying any heed to things that might have occured in the past. 

Lance wasn’t and had never been like that. 

That was another point to add to the list of reasons why he didn’t fit the role of being an Altean Prince. 

\--

“Lance?” Keith’s voice came from outside Lance’s quarters and was unnaturally soft, vulnerable almost. 

It was moments before they would have to leave for dinner with Pidge, Hunk and Allura and no matter how much Lance had tried, he couldn’t seem to get his spirits up. 

“Mhm? What?” Lance asked while opening the door, revealing a frowning Keith. 

“You know you can tell me if something’s wrong, right? I know I’m probably not the first person you want to talk to since I’ve been gone for so long but-”

Lance cut him off. “No, no I know I can talk to you, I guess it’s just-” He took a deep breath. “Nevermind.”

“It's just what?” Keith asked immediately, eyes intense.

“It’s nothing, it can wait.” Lance put on a smile that felt too broad for his face. “Let’s go otherwise we’ll miss dinner.” And without saying another word, Lance walked away, heading towards the kitchens.

He heard Keith’s soft footsteps behind him, and the knowledge that he was following _him_ immediately evoked another wave of emotion inside Lance. And even though it was logical that Keith followed him - that was literally part of his job description as a bodyguard - it felt so much more intimate. 

It was scary.

\--

“What do we think?” Pidge asked when everyone was seated at the dinner table, calmly eating. “Did Hunk succeed in cooking something we all like?”

Everyone frantically nodded, too involved in eating their food to answer properly, all the while Hunk smiled softly at Shay, who had her head on his shoulder. Lance smiled genuinely for the the first time that day: Hunk deserved happiness and now with Shay he truly _did_ look happy. Lance let his gaze wander around the table with the soft smile still on his face, only to spot Keith staring at him, his eyes intense as he seemed to be searching Lance. 

The rest of dinner passed by in a haze of overwhelming feelings, that - as they did so often lately - all in some strange way were connected to Keith. 

\--

“Are you sure nothing’s wrong?” Keith asked as they got back to Lance’s room. 

It would be so easy to just say yes. 

But all of Lance’s bones seemed to scream at the prospect of acting like there was nothing wrong. So, even though Lance didn’t quite know what he was dealing with, the urge to admit something was up was too strong to just ignore. He couldn’t keep acting. Not when Keith was looking at him like that.

“No… no I-I’m not sure. I-” 

Keith held his gaze, not saying anything, just simply giving Lance the time he needed to properly answer. 

“You’re leaving and-” Lance paused, he wasn’t really aware of what he was saying as the words just seemed to flow out of him. “How can you be so okay with leaving?! Why would you be so selfish?! You can’t just leave! I still need you and-and I can’t lose you again!”

Keith’s frown deepened as he gently took hold of Lance’s shaking shoulders. “You won’t lose me. I know where you are now, remember? I can drop by whenever I have time.”

Lance wanted to scream in frustration. “You don’t understand, do you? Tell me, when will you ever have time? Will that be before or after the next deadly mission that the Blade seems so eager to send you on?”

When Keith didn’t reply, Lance huffed bitterly. “You won’t ever have time to visit and even if you did, it wouldn’t be enough.”

Keith’s grip on his shoulders tightened. “What are you saying?”

“Simply that I want you-, no, I _need_ you to stay.” Lance took a pause to breathe. “I think I really like you Keith, I don’t know when or how or even why, but I do, I really do.”

Keith froze completely; his eyes wide and mouth opened in surprise. 

“Say something, anything,” Lance said after a moment of silence.

“I-I do too,” Keith said softly, the short sentence immediately provoking hundreds of feelings inside of Lance. “But, I don’t know if the Blade will let me stay. I didn’t even see being able to stay as a possibility. Or if the King-”

“Can I do something before you say anything else?” Lance cut Keith off. 

“What?” Keith asked, his tone vulnerable. 

Without considering it much further Lance slowly, oh so slowly, leaned forward, gently putting his hand on Keith’s cheek.

“This,” Lance said, before tenderly pushing his lips onto Keith’s. 

For a split second Keith froze again and Lance feared that he had done something horribly wrong and out of line, but not long after, Keith started moving, wrapping his hand around Lance, pulling him closer, and Lance could feel how Keith smiled against his teeth.

“What?” Lance asked in response to Keith’s smile. 

“Nothing just-I think I’ve wanted this for a long time,” Keith answered his eyes full of wonder. 

“So you’ll stay?” Lance asked.

“Yes.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So that was the emotional climax I think? I hope you enjoyed, pls leave a comment about what you thought, I personally can't believe that these bitches only had their first kiss NOW. Like i know it's my own fault but DAMN not kissing until the lAST goddamn chapter like shit I might be a bit stupid up in here JJCJDJODJD. I know I have an epilogue to write but shit i'm in my feels, I can't believe this fic is almost done.
> 
> See you in the epilogue !
> 
> As always have a good day/night :')
> 
> -Amber


	20. prologues and epilogues are always about you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "You don't have to be a prodigy to be unique  
> You don't have to know what to say or what to think  
> You don't have to be anybody you can never be  
> That's alright, let it out, talk to me
> 
> Anxiety tossing turning in your sleep  
> Even if you run away you still see them in your dreams  
> It's so dark tonight but you'll survive certainly  
> It's alright, come inside, and talk to me"  
> ~Cavetown (Talk To Me)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Even though this was my first REAL fanfic and there are some things that I'm not particularly happy with in this fic, I still appreciate the love and support SO MUCH !!! Thank you for being there with me all the way, through all the rough patches and sometimes even weeks of me not uploading, you've stuck by me ! Thank you :') 
> 
> Enjoy this last epilogue !!!!!!!!

_Four months later._

Keith had been fired from being Lance’s bodyguard.

The King and Queen had thought it was improper to have your significant other be your bodyguard.

The Blade of Marmora had let him go with the promise of always being there if Keith wanted to return to them _and_ by letting Keith make the promise in return of always being there in case the Blade _really_ needed him. Now he was in training with Captain Yielder: the commander of the Altean army. Keith didn’t know if he could live without fighting, without the excitement of battle, so, instead of losing that fight forever, the King and Queen had implemented Keith into the army. 

He was pondering this all over when suddenly, Lance next to him started talking in his sleep. 

The words he was mumbling were incoherent, but the phrase ‘Can’t be Prince’ always returned, softly whispered under his breath. Keith had seen this before, whenever this would happen it pointed to another one of Lance’s nightmares, he had a lot of those, and Keith couldn’t say whether Lance had had them ever since he came here from the orphanage, they seemed old. They often had something to do with Lance not finding the ability to be Prince within himself even when Keith and so many others thought that he _could_ be Prince. 

Keith softly took a hold of Lance’s shoulders and shook them gently. “Lance! C’mon, wake up!”

Lance pinched his eyes closed and started rolling around trying to dodge Keith’s hands, the nightmare not letting Lance out of its claws just yet. 

“C’mon, Lance. Please?”

Lance’s eyes flew open, the blue in his eyes laced in a frantic glint and his pupils small, he looked disoriented and bewildered. 

Lance’s eyes scanned the room in a frenzy seemingly not able to calm down, but when he spotted Keith, he wrapped his arms around him tightly, hiding his face in the crook of his neck. Keith softly stroked Lance’s hair. 

“Do you want to talk about it?” Keith asked, his voice soft.

He asked this every time he woke Lance up and yet Lance’s answer was always the same. “No not really.”

Keith placed Lance’s head gently back on the pillow.

Keith hummed as he lay back down next to him. “That’s okay, do you want to hear about my dream then?” he asked a smile tracing his lips. 

Lance looked at him and his lips quirked upward the tiniest bit. “Always.”

“Well I woke up a while ago, but before that I was having this dream: you and I were on planet Yuri - remember one of my missions took place there? It’s the water planet - anyways we were just sitting in a boat, we were probably kissing or something, and suddenly the damn lake monster shows up, and I was ready to fight right? But you won’t believe it: this lake monster starts talking to us about how he’s so happy that… ”

Keith smiled when he heard Lance’s soft snores next to him, they were peaceful, calm, and Keith carefully wrapped his arms around Lance, hiding his own face in the crook of Lance’s neck. 

As the soft light of the night traced Lance’s skin, making him seemingly emit a slight glow, Keith decided that he would talk to Lance about his nightmares tomorrow. 

For now he would just lay here like this, dozing off with the person he loved.

And as Keith’s mind fell asleep, he dimly remembered that he had never told Lance exactly _why_ he had been crying the first time they met.

He had cried because he had been alone, so utterly alone.

And then Lance had shown up. 

Keith smiled softly against Lance’s neck, realizing that even though Keith had been Lance’s bodyguard, Lance had saved him a thousand times more than he ever had. 

Lance had given him a home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This has been such an interesting writing journey for me, I've learned so incredibly much and I love and wanna hug every single one of you.
> 
> AHHHH THANK YOU EVERYONE
> 
> I just uploaded the first chapter for my new drarry fic "Nightfall", but no matter what happens I will always remember working on this and keep everything I learned here in mind. I wanna scream, cry, and hug everyone (can you tell this is the first chaptered thing i've ever finished? hehehehe) 
> 
> AGAIN THANK YOU, I LOVE YOU, THANK YOU FOR READING, I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO SAY AHHH. I SINCERELY HOPE THIS HAS BEEN AS MUCH OF AN ADVENTURE FOR YOU AS IT HAS BEEN FOR ME <33333333333
> 
> I'll say it for the last time in the notes for this fic but: I hope you all have a fantastic day/night wherever you are !
> 
> Thank you and forever yours,  
> Amber


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